Modern Criticisms of Middlemarch

Of the recent criticism essays we could read, I liked Robert B. Heilman’s criticism called “Stealthy Convergence” in Middlemarch on page 618. I liked this essay or whatever you want to call it because it talks about Eliot’s use of an extensive character list as well. I really liked the last thing I blogged about because Henry James talked about how the characters were written and interacted with each other so that they projected the a great span of a community. Heilman’s article continues on this sort of path.

He discusses the technique which Eliot so perfectly referenced and utilized, called “stealthy convergence.” This technique allows for “interconnection among people who do not expect it.” What’s great about what Heilman has to say is that through this convergence, Eliot connects various characters whose stories might not directly relate but in reality, with such a small community, they do. That is what she wants to show off about a rural town like Middlemarch. Everyone is connected.

Heilman took a very studies approach to it. What I said above is basically what I think we was trying to say most of the time. He doesn’t talk about the characters so much as the technique in which the story is written. He talks about the chronological tie which was the “oldest and simplest” sort of transition. And it is! Because Eliot and so many authors with large character lists follow a linear chronological path, it’s easy for the reader to understand the transitions between characters. And that’s what Eliot had to master (and according to Heilman, she did): flawless transitions. These transitions had to make sense and Heilman uses a film reference to accomplish his explanation of what Eliot and many others have done, which is panning: “proceeding panoramically from one to another of the neighboring components of groups or scenes.” Heilman praises Eliot saying “no other nineteenth-century novelist, as far as I have observed has hit upon this polished way of transferring us, if not insensibly at least without our feeling the graceless yank of an author’s derrick, from part to part.” Sure, some of us kind of got angsty when we had all those Dorothea-central chapters at the beginning and then it totally switched to Lydgate and co. and we’re left thinking, ‘hey I thought this book was going to be about Dorothea!’ But Heilman breaks it down for us and we realize, ‘o yeah, there was a transition from Dorothea to the Lydgate during the dinner party.’ Ultimately, Eliot creates a cross-over which we can easily follow. These characters do this and that incites a reaction from these characters, etc. and in the end we observe the epitome of a rural community which is a web of interconnected actions and reactions.

p.s. I also really appreciated Heilman’s mentioning of “The Dead Hand” and explaining it as “wills through which dead men seek power over the living.” The book title didn’t make sense until then.

Character Analysis by Henry James

The contemporary reviews of from the back of our copies of Middlemarch contain 
various articles which examine the book and George Eliot's techniques. But to be 
honest I only read a few. I didn't want to anymore. After reading Henry James' 
review titled, "George Eliot's Middlemarch," I didn't want to read anymore. I 
enjoyed it enough that I knew this what what I wanted to write about.

Right from when we started reading Middlemarch, we knew that it would get 
difficult to keep the characters straight. Sure, now that we've read most, if 
not all, of the book we know the characters better. We know the story. We know 
enough to say we notice the absence of a character and wonder when we'll come 
around to their part of the story again. And this is what Henry James talked 
about and that's what I appreciated most. With Mary Barton, there was 
discussion of who the main character really was. Henry James addressed this 
problem with an even greater character list!

James' review opens with the best line! "Middlemarch is at once one of the 
strongest and one of the weakest of English novels." James talks about Eliot's 
range of characters. He speaks best of Dorothea claiming she is the subject of 
the book "a young girl framed for a moral life than circumstance often affords, 
yearning for a motive for sustained spiritual effort and only wasting her ardor 
and soiling her wings against the meanness of opportunity." Dorothea is made out 
to have the "career of an obscure St. Theresa." However while James goes on to 
praise Dorothea as great and genuine creation, he laments that she is not the 
only character to be focused on. She is just a small part, just a part of an 
episode. Other people's relationships become the focus. But James can't help but 
go on about how Dorothea was too superb a heroine to be wasted" especially when 
she loses facetime to the likes of Fred Vincy. But if it's Lydgate, it's 
different. Because Lydgate is a hero as much as Dorothea is...while Ladislaw is 
only a "beautiful attempt." James seems to only wish that Lydgate and Dorothea 
interacted more often because being brought into contact suggests a "wealth of 
dramatic possibility between them." But James acknowledges that if they had, the 
character of Rosamond would've been lost.

Basically, what was awesome about Henry James' review is the way he analyzes 
every character. To truly summarize and analyze the review is merely to copy and 
paste it into the blog. Because what James is really all about is analyzing the 
way the characters interact and the role they play in each other's character 
development. This allows for Eliot's psychological presentation into society.

James claims "the author has desired to be strictly real and to adhere to the 
facts of the common lot..." and had thus presented us with human drama. With 
characters like Dorothea and Lydgate, do you agree?

"Cuz this here is real!!" -- George Eliot (I swear she said it...ok, maybe I'm paraphrasing)

Among the selections from the “Backgrounds” section of George Eliot’s Middlemarch, there are letters from the author to others, as well as chapter excerpts. I didn’t necessarily choose to examine on of each but two selections particularly stood out.

SNL "Scared Straight" This here is real! Know what I'm sayin!?

George Eliot’s excerpt, From Amos Barton: Chapter V, is just that: a simple excerpt. I found it very useful to have access to something like this as it better helps us recognize Eliot’s style. Based on the information I discovered when researching this author for my presentation, I learned that one of unique things Eliot did in her writing was step into the narrative and disrupt it with her own insights and casting judgment upon characters, situations, and society. In this excerpt from her short story, Eliot does just that. All that she really does here in this selection is say Rev. Amos Barton is an ordinary guy and if you can’t deal with that then read one of the other books the newspaper is promoting because…”THIS HERE! THIS HERE IS REAL!!” (pardon my SNL-quoting-turrets).

This excerpt, while it represents Eliot’s affinity for interjecting “on behalf of a man who was so very far from remarkable,” also presents itself as an example of the realism Eliot is known for. Amos Barton is a realist character; “unmistakably commonplace.” She argues that men in real life are not so extraordinary but simply human. “Yet these commonplace people…have their unspoken sorrows, and their sacred joys; … is there not a pathos in their very insignificance…?” Eliot suggests that through realism, we shall experience the  human soul.

The other selection that intrigued me was George Eliot’s Letter to Sara Sophia Hennell (Foleshill, 9 October 1843). I find it interesting that we are made to read more of Eliot’s writings. Wouldn’t it be beneficial to see letters to the famous author so as we might get a glimpse into what her writing inspires within others? Instead, it’s like we get to hear more about Eliot’s opinions and outlook on life and society as if we aren’t already reading about it through Middlemarch. Not that I’m really complaining…it’s an interesting perspective to read about. Especially after having researched George Eliot’s history, I found this letter interesting as it reflected realizations she had growing up. What I found most notable was Eliot’s regard with individual beliefs and the pressure of society. She grew up a pious young lady until she met freethinkers, philosophers, theologists, etc…people who opened her eyes and caused doubts within herself. These doubts led to her revealing to her father that she no longer supported the Christian religion. This created a great rift in their relationship. From this sort of experience, I wonder, if she came to this conclusion: “The results of nonconformity in a family are just an epitome of what happens on a larger scale in the world.” I believe it is these sort of philosophies—is that what I should call them?—which drive Eliot to be a great realist writer; to present these ideas to the public through a tolerable but realist narrative. While she does write pious characters such as Dorothea, Eliot’s is determined to be the realist she will be known for. She asks: “…how are we to do anything toward the advancement of mankind? Are we to go on cherishing superstitions out of fear that seems inconsistent with any faith in a Supreme Being?” She answers that instead we me must be good and do good, moral deeds.

Modern Criticism of Mary Barton

I just want to open with my silly frustration at the fact that the modern reviews of Mary Barton are longer than most of 19^th century reviews. Why? Why is that?! Because it’s an older book now there’s suddenly so much more to say?? Or is it because there’s more space to fill in the papers with book reviews nowadays? Grrr! Haha!

So because of the lengthy reviews, I chose to only discuss one of them instead of two or three. John Lucas seemed to have several things to say about Mary Barton and other reviewer’s opinions. The criticism I chose to focus on was Lucas’ discussion of [Carson’s Murder and the Inadequacy of Hope in Mary Barton]. In this selection, Lucas looks at Gaskell’s work in neither a positive or negative light. I assume he didn’t ‘take sides’ because he was writing in the 1960s and Gaskell’s portrayal of the British upper and lower class has influence on his personal life, unlike those reviewers back then who were likely to be condemning Gaskell because they were the mill-owners she wrote ill of. Therefore his analysis of Mary Barton is as objective as a modern critic might expect to be. He speaks well of Gaskell and her novel, except when it comes to her motivations in writing Carson’s murder. He acknowledges her political agenda in referencing liberalism but he does not condemn her for it. Instead he says, “Mary Barton is a remarkable novel because it so powerfully suggests the guilt at which all liberalism must eventually connive, and which therefore requires Mrs. Gaskell to put it behind her with a resoluteness for which few liberals would feel the need: …” (501-502). Thus Lucas approaches a topic of which we’re familiar with discussing: Gaskell’s sense of resolution and presentation of social solutions.

Now I could reiterate that question here and ask you, if Gaskell provided viable solutions to the social problems present in her novel. But it’s a bit of an open-ended question, isn’t it? Because Mary Barton was a novel focused on a group of individuals and their experiences within the system. Who can fault that description? It’s basically the bare bones of several novels, isn’t it? Therefore, I propose we assert that John Barton and Carson Jr. and Sr. are meant to be representations of both ends of the spectrum. Gaskell sets them up for the best and worst circumstances; the best being Carson Sr.’s forgiveness and reform, and Barton’s death rather than imprisonment; the worst being Harry Carson’s murder. Still…they are characters in a unique story, “even if Carson’s reform is genuine it is a purely individual matter, whereas one side of Mrs. Gaskell certainly hopes it will emerge as a general recommendation” (504).

I’m sure we can agree that Mary Barton took an interesting turn when Harry Carson was murdered. Suddenly it wasn’t a social problem novel so much as a murder mystery. Did Gaskell always intend for this plot/genre shift? Or was Harry Carson’s murder and the following investigation a cop out after realizing the hopelessness of everyone’s situation? Lucas thinks “There can be little doubt that Mrs. Gaskell always intended the murder to happen” (502). Okay. I suppose I can get on board with that. It makes sense that a hopeless situation escalate to murder…in this context (!) with the pressure of Chartist unions upon you. But Lucas has a point that Gaskell looks to the murder to make her way out of the complex web of industry life she’s portrayed. What’s great about Lucas’ review is that he both agrees and disagrees with fellow critics. Where one critic says the murder was too dramatic and was used as a fall back for Gaskell, Lucas asserts a sort of representative point of view which fits the story better as a “dramatisation of the fear of violence which was widespread among the upper and middle classes at the time” (502). Then it seems that Gaskell is hoping to follow a pattern: “class antagonism producing a violence from which springs reconciliation” (503). That’s a totally logical pattern. But does it only work in books or movies?

John Barton dies and Mr. Carson forgives him; his “forgiveness and vow of reform seem to represent a triumph for the best hopes of liberalism” (503). Perhaps that was Gaskell’s intention. If she can’t propose specific solutions, she can at least provide hope. However, according to Lucas’ review, it’s not enough.

Gaskell, Elizabeth. Mary Barton. Ed Thomas Recchio: A Norton Critical Edition. New York: W. W. Norton, 2008. Print.

Contemporary Reviews of Mary Barton: Summary and Analysis

I decided to look at three reviews: an unsigned review from the Manchester Literary Times (1848), John Forster’s review from the Examiner (1848) and a piece from Manchester in 1844: Its Present Condition and Future Prospects by Leon M. Faucher (obviously published in 1844). I figured a few reviews were bound to be similar in discussing Mary Barton. That’s why I decided to include Faucher’s review. Unlike the first two reviews, which spoke well of the novel and its anonymous author, Faucher seemed instead to use Mary Barton as a platform on which to write his own political/economical/social commentary of England’s society and industry. “When the evils connected with its industry were first brought to light, efforts were made to divert public attention from the subject and…the existence of these evils was denied.” The only way one might even deduce that Mary Barton had anything to do with Faucher’s ‘review’ is because it can be seen as an example of breaking through the delusion and exposing said evils of industry in manufacturing towns. The anonymous and Forster’s review, like I previously said, were favorable and more focused on the story of Mary Barton, how it was told, and who could’ve possibly written it. They recognized Gaskell’s goal as Forster claims, “fiction may be allowed to enter where philosophy cannot well find its way.” And that is why some reviewers, like Forster recommended Mary Barton.

I suppose for my analysis I’m choosing to focus on the idea of Gaskell’s anonymity when she first published this novel. As we learned from our classmate’s presentation on Elizabeth Gaskell, as a first-time novelist, she published Mary Barton anonymously in case the novel was received poorly. If anything, her standing as a debut author is recognized as the unsigned reviewer from the Manchester Literary Times claims “the writer [is] new to the world of literature.” While there were mixed reviews, Forster’s and the unsigned review were positive and spoke well of the author. Quite a few reviewers attempted to determine the identity of the author. The unsigned reviewer instead notes the “evidence of much higher capacity on the part of the author” but seems unsure as to the gender—which was likely to be a deciding factor on how Mary Barton was received. Henry Fothergill Chorley is among said reviewers, in assuming the author is a “(he?)”. Forster makes the opposite conclusion: “Unquestionably the book is a woman’s.” He claims to have deduced this fact through casual remarks and how the characters of women and children are dealt with. He also makes guesses at Gaskell’s identity by assuming she is “more than ordinarily familiar” with towns like Manchester and the workpeople social class. Forster was open-minded to a female author as she wielded a great power with the sympathies, something a female writer might be better at. While both reviewers, Forster and the unsigned reviewer, seemed preoccupied with determining the identity of the author, they did not allow it to cloud their judgment as they reviewed her novel. And while Forster was keen to assert that the book was not made to be a political novel, it definitely seemed to be an important social matter in determining the gender of the writer who would dare—in the best of ways—to publish a novel which touched so boldly on the current social issues between the middle and working class.

Gaskell, Elizabeth. Mary Barton. Ed Thomas Recchio: A Norton Critical Edition. New York: W. W. Norton, 2008. Print.

I'm Dying...So Here's a Poem About a Flower...

So if memory serves me right--and I think I'd remember if we did--Professor Hague scratched D.H. Lawrence off the schedule to spend more time on James Joyce's "Ivy Day in the Committee Room." I wasn't sure what to write my last blog on but then I decided to look at D.H. Lawrence. Why not? We didn't cover him but the poems are actually interesting. It went back and forth on which poem to write about: "Piano" or "Bavarian Gentians." Boy, are they on different ends of the emotional scale!
"Piano" is an interesting poem. Not too sad and all about longing for the past--a concept we became familiar with previously this semester. It's because of the familiar theme that I considered writing about it but the other poem is equally fascinating.

"Bavarian Gentians"
By D.H. Lawrence

Not every man has gentians in his house
in Soft September, at slow, Sad Michaelmas.

Bavarian gentians, big and dark, only dark
darkening the daytime torchlike with the smoking blueness of Pluto's
     gloom,
ribbed and torchlike, with their blaze of darkness spread blue
down flattening into points, flattened under the sweep of white day
torch-glower of the blue-smoking darkness, Pluto's dark-blue daze,
black lamps from the halls of Dio, burning dark blue,
giving off darkness, blue darkness, as Demeter's pale lamps give off
     light
lead me then, lead me the way.

Reach me a gentian, give me a torch!
Let me guide myself with the blue, forked torch of a flower
down the darker and darker stairs, where blue is darkened on blueness
even where Persephone goes, just now, in from the frosted September
to the sightless realm where darkness is awake upon the dark
and Persephone herself is but a voice
or a darkness invisible enfolded in the deeper dark
of the arms Plutonic, and pierced with the passion of dense gloom,
among the splendor of torches of darkness, shedding darkness on the
     lost bride and groom.


So...for some reason...there are tons of versions of this poem online, all of them with several endings! It's really frustrating but I'm just ready to give up and say here's one of the versions. I'll post a link to a youtube reading of the poem at the bottom of this blog. It's really interesting to listen to it.

So, it's a really, really depressing poem, right? It's one of Lawrence's most famous poems about death. It was published posthumously in a collection called Last Poems, published in 1932. D.H. Lawrence (David Herbert Lawrence, b. 1885 d. 1930) wrote this poem after being diagnosed with TB and learning that he would likely die from it soon. I don't particularly want to analyze this poem like we usually do, talking about what kind of poem it is and all that because honestly, the research for this poem has proven somewhat inconsistent. I chose to write about it merely to bring to our attention a dark attitude towards death through such vivid imagery that we've not really been presented with  in this modernism period. It wasn't about conforming to the current style of poetry at the time. Lawrence was facing his mortality and gave it all he had to write this poem and a couple more. He put his heart into it. The imagery in this poem is incredible! It's not very black and white though (maybe black and blue?) but what I mean to say is that it's not a general description of a scene. It's very deep, requiring a lot of thought to recognize the merging of the beauty of a flower with a Greek/Roman mythology in a way that illustrates a depressing outlook on life.

I found this picture when googling Persephone.
One can almost picture Bavarian  Gentians growing at her feet.

The flower--which has a torchlike shape--becomes a mode of transition to a myth famous for it's symbolism for life and death. Persephone was the daughter of Demeter, the Goddess of the Harvest, and was stolen away by Hades or in this case the Roman counterpart, Pluto, to be his wife. After being tricked into eating a pomegranate in the realm of Hades, Persephone is bound to Pluto. She is bound to stay in Hades with him but allowed for a period of 6 months, I believe, to return to the surface and reunite with her mother. This story corroborates the changing of the seasons. Spring symbolizing rebirth. However, it's really about Persephone's constantly having to descend into the darkness that Lawrence is touching on. Like all mortals, it is inevitable that Persephone travel to the Underworld.

Basically, Lawrence is contemplating life and death, imagining a vast darkness to come. It's a complex story that he writes and I'm not sure if I'm up to the task to interpret it word for word. But here's one thing that really drew me in...could he have used the words dark(ness) and blue(ness) a couple more times!?! I wonder if it's that kind of repetitiveness where he just went with the flow and wrote his emotions down, not caring if he was repetitive because that's how he felt, blue (depressed) and consumed by the darkness to come.

photo credit: 
Persephone: http://browse.deviantart.com/?offset=552#/d20ql8f
The Flower: http://www.edwardbach.org/Research/creative_Poetry_gentian.htm 

http://youtu.be/9caKhhq8TIw

Am I a puppet? Who's pulling the strings? Are there strings or is it a game of chance?

So...I'm going to be honest...

And--honestly--why wouldn't I? I wasn't too excited about having to do a blog for one of my classes at first. I had just hoped that I could do the readings, papers and tests and that would be the sum of work for this class. But it has been fun. I think I've really embraced blogging and putting my thoughts out here. There's a lot more freedom and I'm not afraid to put more of myself into these posts rather than just boring people with a cut and dry analysis. I do realize that it probably comes off as a cheap way of reaching my word limit but I hope that it just shows how much I enjoy this assignment.

However, this is the next honest part--and I expect you don't really care, if you're reading this you're either my professor or your a peer who's looking for a blog post to comment on to fill your comment quota--my head is not really into this blog post this week. My laptop broke last weekend and since then my productivity level has been incredibly low. So...let's get this over with--it's the only productive thing I'll be doing this weekend and it's already Sunday.

My default mode is to just look at the poems we read this last week. I tuned in and out various times throughout the week and so it makes sense that the only thing that really stuck with me and caught my attention came at the beginning of the week.

"Hap"

If but some vengeful god would call to me
From up the sky, and laugh: "Thou suffering thing,
Know that thy sorrow is my ecstasy,
That thy love's loss is my hate's profiting!"

Then would I bear it, clench myself, and die,
Steeled by the sense of ire unmerited;
Half-eased in that a Powerfuller than I
Had willed and meted me the tears I shed.

But not so. How arrives it joy lies slain,
And why unblooms the best hope ever sown?
Crass Casualty obstructs the sun and rain,
And dicing Time for gladness casts a moan....
These purblind Doomsters had as readily strown
Blisses about my pilgrimage as pain.

Does it say something about my work ethic that I always choose shorter poems? Honestly...kind of. I have a really good work ethic and it shines when the pressure is on (ergo...procrastination is key to a good grade--not really words to live by). But maybe it says more that basically I'm not a big poetry person. I'm studying Creative Writing to write fiction not poems. So I suppose I could say that my attention span for poetry is short. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, not all poems are epic poems so there is a great supply of shorter ones. I also think shorter poems are great at getting their point across if they only have two or three stanzas. Every word is important.

"Hap" is a sonnet written by Thomas Hardy in the year 1898. The rhyme scheme is a simple ABAB CDCD EFEFFE. The word "hap" can be taken to be a shorter version for the phrase "that which happen by chance." As we discussed in class, the poem has an "If..then..." premise that is completed with the optional "...but." This type of structure is complimented with three stanzas starting with each word. The title and "if, then, but" structure really drive home the meaning of the poem when reading into it.



A vengeful god pulls the strings of your life?
"Thou suffering thing,/Know that thy sorrow is my ecstasy,/That thy love's loss is my hate's profiting!"
Dance, Puppet, Dance...SUFFER!

In the first stanza, Hardy or the speaker mentions the idea that possibly there might be some vengeful god (not Christian God but a general deity) who basically has it out for him, controlling his life and causing him the pain and misery he experiences in his life and revels in making him suffer. If there is...see the next stanza...

In the second stanza, he then says that he'll just grin and bear until death--knowing that there is nothing he could do to change and improve his life because a higher power has control over it. How lazy! That's a kind of scapegoat isn't it? "I really wanna write the next Harry Potter but some god has it out for me and won't allow it to be published so I'll just remain a starving artist and never really apply myself. If there wasn't a vengeful god out to make me suffer, it wouldn't have been rejected by the one and only publishing company I sent it to." Obviously, not true in that instance. Everyone knows that getting published is by trial and error.

The third stanza is where Hardy completes the poem by saying that the if...then statement is not the case. Capitalizing words like Casualty, Time and Doomsters--to me, suggests the idea that there are other powers at work, in keeping with the polytheistic idea of a non-specifically-Christian God. He seems to assert that his life has been met with both sorrow and joy and a god is not responsible for the coming and going of these experiences but rather it is by happenstance, chance or "Casualty" which is neutral. "dicing Time" means that it is random and unexpected, further supporting the claim of chance having the power.

Basically, the speaker might almost prefer knowing that there was some powerful force controlling his suffering and events that cause it in his life so that he could be put at "half-ease[ed]" that it was out of his control. Rather instead, the speaker admits the likelihood of this is not very high and instead he is subject to a life of chance that would just as quickly deal him a card of happiness and joy or one of pain.

Does this all make sense or am I rambling? Like I said, I'm not completely focused. I found the poem really interesting though as it examines the idea of fate and higher powers. I'm sure it no doubt reflects many people's ideas of fate vs. free will.

photo credit: http://rogersroadrash.blogspot.com/2010_12_01_archive.html