In death they were not divided

I finished re-reading The Mill on the Floss tonight; I first read it in 1998-1999 when I had the pleasure of being in Rohan Maitzen's graduate seminar on George Eliot. I loved it then; I have a much greater appreciation for it now. Why I love this book is radically different in 2011; it's a sign of how immature a reader I was then that it's only now that I understand how much this novel is not about Maggie and Stephen and how much it is about Maggie and Tom, and the larger web of familial and social relations they stand at the centre of. For those of you who saw this obvious fact ages ago, don't laugh too hard at me.

I've never believed the fairly commonly held notion by so many readers I've come across that if you don't properly sympathize with a book's central concern and its characters' most basic and irresistible desires and motives, it's because you haven't experienced them personally. I have argued with a number of parents about this with specific regard to Cormac McCarthy's The Road; they insist that I don't like it because I don't understand it, and that I don't understand it because I don't have children. I have dismissed this fuzzy syllogism as balderdash and I still do. I maintain, against a tide of disbelieving moms and dads (mostly dads) who read books, and internet trolls given to uttering death threats, that that book is bad because the writing is bad and because the plot in no way makes up for this deficiency.

But my failure to understand what I now see The Mill on the Floss is about--the central importance of our first relationships with the people and places who raise us--is sort of related to this claim, and that's surprising. My failure to see what this novel's primary concerns are isn't the result of my not having had that experience, however (although my experience growing up was certainly nothing like Maggie's, and not just because I luckily had electricity, but unluckily no fetish whose head I could hammer nails into). Rather, it was, I think, the result of my being, at that moment in my life, determined to escape all the scenes and claims of my life thus far, to leave and be someone else by being somewhere else (and, indeed, I escaped directly to rural South Korea within the year). It wasn't that I didn't understand what made Maggie what she is; on the contrary, I quite desperately didn't want these things to be this powerful or important, and that clouded my reading judgment.

To be someone else by being somewhere else--naive? overly simplistic? foolish? weird? Yes. But it's something Maggie feels implicitly and partly why I've always felt both attracted to and irritated by her. For while other characters in the book seem to enjoy the appearance of such bonds, none feel them so excruciatingly deeply as she does; certainly, none are as devoted to them as she is, even in spite of her struggles with her own vanities and selflessnesses. For her, family, birthplace, and her everyday life cannot be separated without serious damage to her soul. I was always desperate for her to show enough chutzpah to tell the stupid, self-righteous, and unbending Tom to shove it; to just leave, one way or another, and try to find some place where she wasn't constantly belittled and misunderstood.

In other words, I wasn't just an immature reader during my first go-round with this novel, I was also a selfish one--for I wanted things for Maggie that she wouldn't have wanted for herself, things that would have made her even more miserable! I had a touch of Stephen Guest in me then and would have gladly tricked her down the river and out of town, just to give myself the satisfaction of kicking her dumbshit family to the curb.

No, I was not a generous reader, and I suspect that's not unrelated to the fact that I wasn't a very generous person. I don't know if I'm a generous person now; probably not. But I think I'm a somewhat better reader. I think George Eliot was incredibly generous; indeed, I don't know how anyone who wasn't painfully generous could write books like hers. Her profound intelligence was focused so entirely on the human; even her philosophical musings, which the very silly Anthony Trollope complained about, never stray far from the most central human concerns. She looked deep and doesn't seemed to have judged anything she saw too harshly.

********

Now, about the physical act of reading The Mill on the Floss. I started out with a trusty Penguin Classic, sturdy and well footnoted. But my back has been not so great lately and to try to make carrying it around in my bag less of a burden, my husband convinced me to try it on the Kobo eReader he got for his birthday.

At first, I absolutely loathed the experience. It didn't feel like a book and so I was constantly being reminded of the ridiculous Star Trek: The Next Generation prop I was holding in front of my face. I was distracted by how frequently I had to "turn" the page. No footnotes. And a lot of typos. I didn't think I'd make it. There was wailing and gnashing of teeth.

But then, it somehow began to grow on me. And it's fine; at some point, it stopped feeling like staring at a gadget and started feeling like reading. I switched back to the Penguin tonight to finish The Mill on the Floss and that was also good, and now all of a sudden I have double the reading options I used to have. I don't know how often I'll use this thing; it is my husband's after all, and as acceptable as the experience turned out to be, I still missed the tactile associations of holding a book-book in my hands. That said, if I ever get around to Clarissa, it might have to be on Kobo...otherwise, I'll end up in hospital.

I miss those days of jam and idleness

My reading is all over the place lately; it's taking me a long time to finish things, in part because Autumn hasn't been very cold and I've been cycling like a fiend. I've also been working on the 4th Annual Totally Fabulous Vegan Bake-Off because its inventor and fearless leader, Lisa, is off to distant lands to talk to people about raw food. She's a brave and lovely lady.

But I have been reading. I've been plodding my way (enthusiastically! but it's still plodding) through The Letters of Ursula Nordstrom for months now. There are two things you need to know about children's book editor Ursula Nordstrom: 1) She wrote fantastic letters. (E.g., "Someday very soon I'm going to write you a great letter. But not today.") 2) She discovered the genius that is Maurice Sendak and it's her we have to thank for the timeless, wild rumpus that is Where the Wild Things Are.

Letters take me a long time—I read one and then I feel as though I'm done with that author for at least a few months; short stories are the same. It's absurd. My sleepy snail pace with this collection has been exacerbated by the fact that the first copy I borrowed from the library fell to pieces in my hands, and there are only two circulating copies; I may not be able to immediately renew it when my time is up.

(This book was recommended to me by Rohan Maitzen, who is much better at storming through books than I am, unless those books are by David Mitchell.)

I'm also slogging through cult favourite The Dog of the South, by Charles Portis. It began like a beautiful, hilarious, silly dream; there was a deer's head mounted on the wall of a seedy bar, and that deer had a smoke in its mouth...but then, I don't know. The book just deflated and while I'm 2/3 of the way through I don't know if I can bring myself to even finish it. I honestly don't know how a book that began by making me laugh, and out loud like a stupid git at that, every 20 lines or so can have become so totally dull and uninspired.

And I feel wretched that I don't love this book—Kevin recommended it because he loved it so. But you know, we actually often don't love each other's favourites. I thought Soucy's The Immaculate Conception was brilliant; he objected that it didn't always make sense, and not in a charming way. He loves Cormac McCarthy, who I think is very clever only for having made it as a famous writer who generally can't write complete sentences. We tend to agree completely only on Cloud Atlas; but that is more than enough to build a friendship on.

Rohan, again, directs my reading life: After 13 years, I'm re-reading The Mill on the Floss, which I first read in her George Eliot graduate seminar; she's teaching it again now to some undergraduates. I'd been hoping to read along and write a series of posts worthy of my eddication as I did with Romola last year. However, while I think I love the book much more now than I did in 1998, I just don't have the time; those Romola posts took me hours and hours, and as I worked in a bookstore then, it seemed much easier to find time to spend hours and hours thinking and writing about books.

I lament not giving this novel the attention it deserves, but I'm happy that it seems to have reignited my enthusiasm for my Victorian Lit project—which I am absolutely not going to jeopardize again by trying, again, to read Thackeray's The History of Henry Esmond! I might even skip Villette and go right back to Dickens, just to be safe.

Then there are all these books I haven't even cracked, the most important being my Lisbon guidebook and my Portuguese phrase book. I really, really should look at these books, as we're heading to Portugal in just over a month...but somehow it just keeps not happening. I keep finding myself busy with something else. God, I'm such an irresponsible pre-traveller!

More catching up; new fall fashion

Four more books to get caught up on!

1) Mort, Terry Pratchett.

The fourth book in the Discworld series is about a gormless young would-be scholar (the cleverly named Mort) who, because he is made almost entirely of elbows and knees, can't seem to find an apprenticeship - except with DEATH. Hi jinx and kittens and myriad shades of black and the kitchens of greasy spoons ensue. This has all the elements of silly hilarity and somehow isn't hilarious. Pratchett, I just don't understand why your humour isn't working for me. I will keep trying.

2) Scoop, Evelyn Waugh.

Another gormless protagonist, this time one who desires only to remain in his comfy house in the country and write a column about Nature. While not apprenticed to DEATH, William Boot does go through hell after mistakenly becoming the foreign correspondent for a dripping London tabloid. He is sent to Ishmaelia to cover the coup that is apparently about to begin. Hi jinx, attractive German women, portable Christmas dinners, and a great deal of casual racism ensue. Much better than Vile Bodies, which I loathed, and certainly well-written, but altogether not Wodehousian enough for me.

3) Scenes of Clerical Life, George Eliot.

George Eliot's first book is not, I think, often taught in 19th-century lit classes or even in George Eliot seminars. It is not ranked up there with Middlemarch. In his introduction to the 1973 Penguin Classics edition of the book, David Lodge bloody well almost apologizes for its existence, beginning with this marketing fail: "Scenes of Clerical Life is not a title likely to set the pulse of a modern reader racing with anticipation" (p. 7).

Well, dummy, you're not helping. And besides, why should increased heart-rate be part of the measure of a good book anyway? Damn your fashionable eyes, Lodge. Scenes of Clerical Life contains the important elements present in all of Eliot's brilliant work: primarily, excellent writing, and her unique combination of ruthlessness and almost infinite compassion when exposing her characters' flaws, weaknesses, and cruelties. This is not as good as Silas Marner or The Mill on the Floss, maybe, but it's all relative - it seems clear to me that George Eliot sprang out the God's forehead fully formed.

4) Armadillo, William Boyd.

I really enjoyed Armadillo, even if it was maybe a bit pretentious and copped out with the whole "Oh, is this real, or is it a dream, WHAT THE HELL is it? non-ending" ending that is so annoying. But before said non-ending, the writing was very good, the scenes compelling, the characters convincing enough. Pinky rings, kilts, hairy bums, infidelity, 3,000 year-old masks, intrigue, unrequited love, and head wounds ensued. Most importantly, Boyd managed to make the ins and outs of the insurance business utterly fascinating. No matter what other faults this book might have, this alone makes it clear that the man is a genius. Looking forward to reading Restless at some point, which everyone (and by everyone I mean Ying) says is even better.

So, now I'm all caught up, and I'm hoping (but not promising) that all the books I read from here on in will get posts of their very own.

Fashion
So, what do you think of Bookphilia's new look? It seemed overdue for a change. And I've been waiting a long time to use that illuminate MS. pic with the horse kicking the lion in the head.

The light abandonment of ties, whether inherited or voluntary

Okay, confession time: I am a little flabbergasted by Eliot's conclusion to Romola. What follows made sense when I was writing it and editing it but ceased to do so the second I stopped. Yet, I don't know what else to say. So, for those of you who've read Romola - tell me what I'm missing and where I've gone astray. Please!

Spoilers, of course
At the conclusion of Volume two, Romola not only finds herself going back to Florence but returning with a clear purpose as well. This purpose is to help her Florentine brethren in a time of great need and to fulfill her chosen obligation to her unworthy husband. At the beginning of the third volume, we learn that while her marriage is no happier (less so, in fact), Romola has found satisfaction in the help she can provide to those  less fortunate around her.

Romola takes so well to the “place” the Frate describes and sends her back to that when we’re “shown” Romola’s home on the Via di’ Bardi, it is described as filled with families for whom she has taken responsibility; as well, she is frequently described as succoring her fellow Florentines out on the street. She has, it seems, immersed herself in the life of service to others so central to the Frate’s ideas for political and religious reform.

In so doing, Romola finds a powerfully maternal role to play, although it is a sort of maternity quite different from the one denied to her in such painful terms in the novel’s second volume. She becomes the “visible Madonna” whose presence and deeds provide as much comfort as her invisible counterpart, a statue of the Virgin paraded through the streets only in times of great need or suffering.

And yet, Romola eventually finds herself unable, again, to remain with Tito as his involvement in the city’s woes become inescapably personal with the arrest and execution of her godfather, Bernardo del Nero. By this point, she knows of Tito’s cruelty towards his adopted father and suspects his part in other underhanded political machinations; she finds herself tied to a man in whom there remains not one detectable shred of either decency or loyalty to anything but his own base and selfish desires:

Romola went home and sat alone through the sultry hours of that day with the heavy certainty that her lot was unchanged. She was thrown back again on the conflict between the demands of an outward law, which she recognized as a widely ramifying obligation, and the demands of inner moral facts which were becoming more and more peremptory. She had drunk in deeply the spirit of that teaching by which Savonarola had urged her to return to her place. She felt that the sanctity attached to all close relations, and, therefore, pre-eminently to the closest, was but the expression in outward law of that result towards which all human goodness and nobleness must spontaneously tend; that the light abandonment of ties, whether inherited or voluntary, because they had ceased to be pleasant, was the uprooting of social and personal virtue. What else had Tito's crime towards Baldassarre been but that abandonment working itself out to the most hideous extreme of falsity and ingratitude? 

And the inspiring consciousness breathed into her by Savonarola's influence that her lot was vitally united with the general lot had exalted even the minor details of obligation into religion. She was marching with a great army; she was feeling the stress of a common life. If victims were needed, and it was uncertain on whom the lot might fall, she would stand ready to answer to her name. She had stood long; she had striven hard to fulfil the bond, but she had seen all the conditions which made the fulfilment possible gradually forsaking her. The one effect of her marriage-tie seemed to be the stifling predominance over her of a nature that she despised. All her efforts at union had only made its impossibility more palpable, and the relation had become for her simply a degrading servitude. The law was sacred. Yes, but rebellion might be sacred too. It flashed upon her mind that the problem before her was essentially the same as that which had lain before Savonarola, — the problem where the sacredness of obedience ended, and where the sacredness of rebellion began. To her, as to him, there had come one of those moments in life when the soul must dare to act on its own warrant, not only without external law to appeal to, but in the face of a law which is not unarmed with Divine lightnings, — lightnings that may yet fall if the warrant has been false. (pp. 552-53)

So Romola flees a second time, with neither any guilt about the suffering Florentines she leaves behind, nor with anyone this time popping up out of nowhere to stop her. And in a very strange, almost Absurdist, moment, Romola purchases a boat and allows herself to simply drift away in the hopes that the boat will sink and she’ll die.

I find this narrative choice almost laughable – had Eliot wanted to portray Romola as engaging on some sort of spiritual agony of wandering, something a little more desert-like would have imbued her choice with more obvious spiritual meaning. Yet, absurd as this floating boat choice is, it is appropriate insofar as Romola is in many ways reproducing Tito’s fleeing of his own familial and social responsibilities. And she, like he does at the beginning of the novel, washes up in a mysterious place where she may create for herself a clean slate – which, like Tito, she does.

Of course, it is not really the same at all – her leaving Tito is something that is, I think, more than comprehensible; he has turned into a monster. Further, her escape and severing of emotional ties do not lead to a life increasingly defined by the character defects, crimes, and omissions that lead to Tito’s near death at the hands of an angry mob. On the contrary, faced with a town literally dying of the plague, Romola rolls up her sleeves and gets to work like a stern but loving angel and forces the town’s healthy inhabitants to help those who are sick. She revives her role as ministering Madonna but also accomplishes what the Frate fails to do in Florence – she unites these people in their suffering.

It seems, in other words, that her rebellion against Tito and the ties that bound her to Florence is, indeed, sacred. It seems as though Romola has not only integrated the lessons the Frate teaches her, but also that she transcends them by abandoning any sense of duty propped up only by fragile philosophies and religious superstitions.

And yet, when she has effectively saved this town from death and has rested herself sufficiently to begin to reflect, she immediately begins to regret all she has done there:

Her work in this green valley was done, and the emotions that were disengaged from the people immediately around her rushed back into the old deep channels of use and affection. That rare possibility of self-contemplation which comes in any complete severance from our wonted life made her judge herself as she had never done before: the compunction which is inseparable from a sympathetic nature keenly alive to the possible experience of others, began to stir in her with growing force. She questioned the justness of her own conclusions, of her own deeds: she had been rash, arrogant, always dissatisfied that others were not good enough, while she herself had not been true to what her soul had once recognised as the best. She began to condemn her flight: after all, it had been cowardly self-care; the grounds on which Savonarola had once taken her back were truer, deeper than the grounds she had had for her second flight. How could she feel the needs of others and not feel, above all, the needs of the nearest?

But then came reaction against such self-reproach. (pp. 650-51)

But this recoil from self doubt comes not of the incredible good she has performed in the plague-destroyed town:

The memory of her life with Tito, of the conditions which made their real union impossible, while their external union imposed a set of false duties on her which were essentially the concealment and sanctioning of what her mind revolted from, told her that flight had been her only resource. (p. 651)

Romola is possessed of a fierce moral intelligence which never allows her, really, to stop questioning herself; yet, she also cannot get beyond her own motives to consider the results of her actions. She is curiously forgetful of all the needy people she leaves behind when she floats away from Florence, and she is just as shockingly unreflective of the ties she has both formed and created with and for the inhabitants of the plague-ridden town at which she washes up.

She is, of course, brought back to the friends and family she left behind in Florence and this is neither surprising nor problematic, really. What is problematic is how theoretical her performance of her role as a Madonna of the people is revealed to be. She performs this role to perfection, both in Florence and outside it, but it remains a role; she continually fails to simply live, to recall Piero di Cosimo’s words early in the novel, but must always be spinning rhetoric, if not lies, to explain her own motivations to herself. That the role doesn’t sit as comfortably upon her shoulders as the nun’s habit she wears in her self-imposed exile is made clear by her inability to remain still until she has made Tito’s other family – Tessa and the children – her own. This is the closest she comes to being a small-m mother and it’s where and how she’s happiest.

Yet, her happiness upon returning to Florence and creating this unique family unit for herself is tempered somewhat by the Frate’s fall and execution. What seems to distinguish Romola from him in the end turns out to be false. For it has always been known that while Savonarola is both sincere and a skilled performer, Romola briefly appears to actually and completely embody his tenets of selfless care for others’ well-being. But Eliot doesn’t allow us to maintain this notion of Romola’s spiritual superiority for long, as we see.

As her role begins to chafe enough to send her back to Florence, the Frate’s role and its difference from his religious experience and connection to God are exposed through intercepted letters, confessions exacted under torture, and in his refusal to display his faith in the trial by fire. He is shown to be separable from how he wants people to understand him – and more importantly, from how he has hitherto understood himself. Romola, with much less pain and many fewer consequences, is shown in the end to be similarly divided.

And I suppose I’m not surprised, when I think about the novel’s conclusion in these terms, that Romola is allowed no bright transcendence of her humanity. This novel is really, at the most basic level, about the pain and bewilderment that arise from maintaining, for reasons both noble and base, one’s persona as distinct (usually superior) from one’s real self. Tito and Baldassare are eaten alive from the inside by the effort they expend in this effort and fittingly die in a hateful embrace; Romola continually flits back and forth, slave to philosophical musings about the meaning of her intentions which prevent her from seeing the importance of her conduct; and the Frate is unable to transcend his own humanity to maintain his role as conduit of the divine in a city desperate for a leader who appeals, for a change, to what’s best in them instead of what’s worst.

There are only three characters in this novel who are exactly what they seem to be: Tessa, the innocent (that could well be a capital I) who remains her sweet and trusting self, unsullied by the man who so casually sullies her; Piero di Cosimo who remains irascible, honest, and acutely perceptive throughout; and Bernardo del Nero, whose dislike of Tito as well as honest and above-board commitment to the Medicis all remain constant and un-dissembled until the bloody, ignominious end.

As usual with Eliot (in my experience), the morally steady characters are the quietest and least discussed in the narrative; they function almost archetypally, standing in contrast to the whirling and wailing and wondering of the characters who, for whatever reasons, cannot simply be.

It is this sort of comfort that Romola’s life with Tessa, the children, and Brigada seems to offer. It is not transcendence or glory that is celebrated, but the “still small voice” of the domestic in whatever form it may take (I think again of Silas Marner here). Yet, those images of infanticide at the beginning and middle of the book are difficult to forget, even, nay especially, in contrast to the apparent domestic calm of the new di Bardi household. And the screaming of Benedetto as Romola turns towards Florence, the baby she saves when she first arrives in the plague-ridden town and with whom she seems to spend all her time until the very last moment, echoes in the space her new maternity inhabits. In George Eliot’s Renaissance Florence, beneath political and familial calm and prosperity there remains instincts and desires and memories that very well may have, eventually, to be strangled in the dark.

The silent bed

In my post last week on the first volume of George Eliot’s Romola, I noted the shocking use of the image of infanticide to describe Tito’s moral degeneration: “Our deeds are like children that are born to us; they live and act apart from our own will. Nay, children may be strangled, but deeds never: they have an indestructible life both in and out of our consciousness” (p. 219). In the second volume of Romola, this ghastly image as it relates to Tito’s behaviour is often revisited, and with increasingly lurid intensity.

Faced with an opportunity to either repent and atone, or to continue on his increasingly dishonest path through life, Tito chooses the latter – and the rest of the volume chronicles the consequences both for Tito and those around him.

Spoilers, my friends, spoilers
Tito’s second crime, which is to deny his father’s identity when confronted with him in the flesh, after having decided against searching for the old man sold into slavery, is described in terms of a monstrous birth:

He might have declared himself to have had what he believed to be positive evidence of Baldassarre’s death; and the only persons who could ever have had positive knowledge to contradict him, were Fra Luca, who was dead, and the crew of the companion galley, who had brought him the news of the encounter with the pirates. The chances were infinite against Baldassarre’s having met again with any one of that crew, and Tito thought with bitterness that a timely, well-devised falsehood might have saved him from any fatal consequences. But to have told that falsehood would have required perfect self-command in the moment of a convulsive shock: he seemed to have spoken without any preconception: the words had leaped forth like a sudden birth that had been begotten and nourished in the darkness. (pp. 286-7)

Tito’s denial of his father "begets" a man with nothing left to lose and no desire remaining save vengeance. And because the only thing left to Tito’s father is revenge, we are promised, fittingly, the death of no other than his own child, Tito. Baldassarre's feelings, as vicious as they are, make disturbing emotional sense in the familial vacuum Tito has created:

I watched till I believed I saw what I watched for. When he was a child he lifted soft eyes towards me, and held my hand willingly: I thought, this boy will surely love me a little: because I give my life to him and strive that he shall know no sorrow, he will care a little when I am thirsty—the drop he lays on my parched lips will be a joy to him . . . Curses on him! I wish I may see him lie with those red lips white and dry as ashes, and when he looks for pity I wish he may see my face rejoicing in his pain. It is all a lie—this world is a lie—there is no goodness but in hate. Fool! not one drop of love came with all your striving: life has not given you one drop. But there are deep draughts in this world for hatred and revenge. I have memory left for that, and there is strength in my arm—there is strength in my will—and if I can do nothing but kill him – (pp. 338-9)

Baldassarre, being both unsuccessful and dissatisfied with physical murder, however, attempts a more complete and prolonged death for Tito – social humiliation and the destruction of his prospects. In this he fails as well, and Tito is thus presented with another opportunity to strangle whatever moral uprightness and familial care he has left in him – and he takes it:

All glances were turned on Tito, who was now looking straight at Baldassarre. It was a moment of desperation that annihilated all feeling in him, except the determination to risk anything for the chance of escape. And he gathered confidence from the agitation by which Baldassarre was evidently shaken. He had ceased to pinch the neck of the lute, and had thrust his thumbs into his belt, while his lips had begun to assume a slight curl. He had never yet done an act of murderous cruelty even to the smallest animal that could utter a cry, but at that moment he would have been capable of treading the breath from a smiling child for the sake of his own safety. (p. 422)

Eliot’s previous uses of the metaphor of child murder in relation to Tito’s moral failings have focused more on the instinctive desperation borne out of “giving birth” to hideous consequences unforeseen and misunderstood. Here, we see Tito consciously engage in such cruelty; Tito has been aware of his father’s presence in Florence for quite some time before this confrontation occurs and he has correctly guessed that vengeance will be Baldassarre’s only goal, and he's been mentally and physically preparing himself for the strike.

This scene, shocking as it is on its own, also clearly draws upon literature’s most famous and perhaps most gruesome image of deformed and vicious maternity, Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth. I have in mind specifically that famous scene in which she convinces her husband to murder Duncan, his metaphorical father:

I have given suck, and know
How tender ’tis to love the babe that milks me:
I would, while it was smiling in my face,
Have pluck'd my nipple from his boneless gums,
And dash'd the brains out, had I so sworn as you
Have done to this. (I.vii.55-60)

These images convey the extent and depth of appalling Tito’s familial rejections – for what could be more disturbing than the murder of something so helpless as a newborn babe? But why use images of perverted maternity so pointedly with a male character to begin with? Given that the source of all Tito’s moral failing is his refusal to behave as a proper son to a father, what are the implications of this specifically female image in relation to a crime between men?

I see Eliot here both confirming and denying the centrality of the mother to Victorian notions of the stability of the family. On one hand, the mother remains the source and symbol of ultimate emotional importance and therefore perverted maternity carries the greatest weight for describing the destruction of familial relationships. On the other hand, by leaving Baldassarre to languish in slavery and then by failing his father-in-law, Bardi, in two key ways, Tito destroys the foundation of family life as a whole, handily and with no female help required. The result, I think, is not a rejection of the centrality of motherhood per se, but an insistence upon the equal power - both creative and destructive - of the male in the family unit in the terms normally attributed only to the maternal figure.

Indeed, it is Tito’s rejection of morality and duty which make his promise of an intellectually and emotionally fruitful union with Romola barren. And this barrenness is reflected both in Romola’s increasing distance from her shallow husband as well as in their literal childlessness:

At certain moments—and this was one of them—Romola was carried, by a sudden wave of memory, back again into the time of perfect trust, and felt again the presence of the husband whose love made the world as fresh and wonderful to her as to a little child that sits in stillness among the sunny flowers: heard the gentle tones and saw the soft eyes without any lie in them, and breathed again that large freedom of the soul which comes from the faith that the being who is nearest to us is greater than ourselves. And in those brief moments the tears always rose: the woman's lovingness felt something akin to what the bereaved mother feels when the tiny fingers seem to lie warm on her bosom, and yet are marble to her lips as she bends over the silent bed. (p. 389)

For Romola, the child that Tito figuratively murders is both her own emotional innocence as well as the beautiful potential once promised by their marriage – but he is not the one who must do the majority of the grieving for these losses, for he feels his acts and their consequences much less keenly than the sensitive and alert Romola does.

Further, it is not even that Tito is barren per se; he does, after all, produce a child, with the painfully trusting and mentally deficient Tessa. Like all the ugly actions and difficult consequences Tito has already begotten, she and their offspring are placed safely out of sight, yet sit with cankerous potential just beyond the view of the social circle in which Tito currently finds so much success and meaning for himself.

Conversely, maternity, so venerated by the Victorians, is denied Romola; and indeed, the second volume concludes with her literally abandoning all possibility of ever claiming such an identity for herself by not only fleeing Florence and her husband but also by doing so disguised as a nun. She becomes the visual image of a woman barred from the expectations of a life of literal mothering. And yet, the serendipitous arrival of Savonarola seems mystically to offer another maternal path to be trodden.

And now, onto the denouement, which I am both greatly anticipating and deeply dreading - for no, I do not want this book to end!

I find it enough to live, without spinning lies to account for life

The quotation from George Eliot's Romola which serves as the title of this post is spoken by the rather surly artist Piero di Cosimo; he says it in response to Tito's comment that perhaps he is a philosopher disguised as a painter, rather than simply a painter. (Tito conceives this idea based on Piero's habit of what Tito calls "the blending of the terrible with the gay" (p. 247).) Piero is distinguishing himself in this assertion, and therefore the art of painting, from other professions and modes of being distasteful to him.

This offhand comment, for me, in many ways lies at the heart of the first book of Romola. In these 200 or so pages we've met Tito Melema, a mysterious Greek washed ashore (literally) in Florence who, by dint of his intelligence and not inconsiderable and almost universally appealing charm, manages to create for himself a comfortable life out of almost nothing. Being good-looking, learned, and possessed of an easy self-confidence goes a long way in Eliot's 15th-century Florence. Tito quickly finds himself employed, attached to an old scholar who adores him, and engaged to the scholar's beautiful and good daughter.

And yet, Tito harbours a grave secret about a breach of familial duty so appalling that were it to be revealed, all his social successes would be stripped of him and shame would be heaped on his head. His secret appears to be safe by the end of the first book; however, as Eliot reminds us, even if Tito continually refuses to acknowledge it, "Our deeds are like children that are born to us; they live and act apart from our own will. Nay, children may be strangled, but deeds never: they have an indestructible life both in and out of our consciousness" (p. 219).

Such an appalling image! (And so representative of the sharply observant ability to dissect what moves the human animal that, to me, makes Eliot stand out far beyond all her peers, even the beloved Dickens.) One can't help but think of Adam Bede and the literal murder of a child here - but a murder not even quite so visceral as strangling! The presence of such an image in the narrator's meditations on what will be the outcome of Tito's dissimulations speaks harrowingly to how his relationships and life - and the lives of those to whom he connects himself - will in all likelihood turn out.

Piero's comment is a negative reflection on Tito's character, even if neither of them has no real sense of how true, and darkly true, it is. Tito could be living his life, simply, with no self-protective or dishonest accounting necessary - what attracts Romola and her father and most others to him is mostly true, and under Romola's influence could have become wholly true - if he weren't carrying around his desperate secret like a rank cancer growing in his belly.

Tito isn't the only one who spins lies to account for life, however. On the one hand, Eliot outlines (in, to me, sometimes admittedly confusing detail) the political complexities of this central European medieval city at a time of political flux. On the other hand, the seemingly benign lies that Bardi and Romola tell one another and themselves regarding Tito - what he can and should mean to them, and what lies behind his passively pleasant eyes - are no less dangerous for being both conceived in sincere and honest ways, and based on all the information at hand. For there are clues, subtle though they may be (in the case of Dino's vision, not so subtle), that suggest that Romola's godfather is not simply being contrary by refusing to subscribe to the universal approbation of the young Greek golden boy.

The expectations Romola and her father hold for Tito - which are entirely reasonable - are nonetheless lies. And they are lies which not only help them to positively account for the blank spots in Tito's history and his current self-representation, but they also feed both his need and his ability to make false accounts for himself. The social ties that bind, in Romola, are tender and beautiful as well as toxic.

Tomorrow, on to book two! I am really enjoying Romola, although as Rohan over at Novel Readings warned me, the first several chapters are slow going. She also warned me to skip the chapter entitled "The Florentine Joke" altogether; I did not follow her advice in this regard, in part because she didn't tell me why to skip it and because I wanted to discover for myself whatever its "flaws" might be. My feeling is that there are two problems, at least from the point of view of being 1/3 through the novel: 1) It stands out for serving no purpose in terms of either narrative movement, establishing atmosphere, or introducing new and important characters; 2) It casts an until then seemingly nice enough character - the barber - in a rather shabby and cruel light. Okay, and 3) It's not actually funny.

While I am happily reading Romola - because in spite of the above, I am ridiculously happy to be deep into an Eliot novel - here's Piero di Cosimo's (I think) most famous painting for you to admire. And a poem by Wm. Blake, which I think much better than the above gestures towards the mood I feel lurking under the surface of Tito and Romola's current happiness. But maybe things will not turn out quite so luridly and gruesomely as I imagine.

"The Sick Worm"
O Rose, thou art sick!
The invisible worm
That flies in the night,
In the howling storm,

Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy:
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy. (From Songs of Experience)

The gods of the hearth exist for us still

A long time ago, I took a graduate course devoted to George Eliot and it's remained one of my favourite courses ever taken. Being introduced to Eliot opened up a whole new world for me because she was just such a ridiculously perfect writer (mind, I haven't read Romola, which I'm told has some weird translation issues). I don't mean perfect in that Fielding's Tom Jones way, where there are absolutely no loose threads left anywhere though. (I did enjoy Tom Jones, very much, but it was very neat, which I'm not sure is an unmitigated good.)

No, for me Eliot is perfect because her writing is so good and so human and unlike Dickens, whom I certainly adore, she never uses the narrative equivalent of loudly proclaiming and gesturing wildly to drive home the importance of any given moment or event. She quietly and clearly lays it all out and trusts us to get it.

And Silas Marner, which inexplicably is the first Eliot I've read in 10 years!!!, is perfect in the way I remember the other Eliot novels I've read being; indeed, perhaps more so. This is why I read - to sometimes have the pleasure of engaging with books this beautiful in both subject and execution.

A gesture towards a plot spoiler - careful!
Silas Marner is what my down east peeps would call a come-from-away in small town Raveloe. He just shows up one day not knowing anyone and begins plying his trade as a weaver. People find him strange but necessary because of the work he does, and he spends fifteen year collecting money, which in the face of his almost complete lack of human interaction becomes the focus of all his passion. He ends up being robbed of all of it and he almost loses his mind...but then he's given something much better. I won't say anymore because while surprise isn't what makes this novel amazing, it won't hurt either.

I'm looking forward to reading Romola, which wasn't on the syllabus of the course I took. I'm also looking forward to Middlemarch, which was on the syllabus but which I didn't read because the font in the copy I had was too small and I needed new glasses and trying to read it was giving me migraines and I was too broke to get either another copy or new specs and someone had the book out of the library and...and. Sigh. It's a big blot on my reading and grad school credibilities, I know. I know! But I'll try to make up for it soon. Mea culpa.