I'd say Middlemarch is better grounded than Villette, but like the
comparison. My favourite GE book though is easily Silas Marner, which is
like a song, prose tho' it may be. And there's that totally uncharacteristic
little tale The Lifted Veil.
Now Willa Cather I must confess I am innocent of.
Our Mutual Friend I think is _almost_ it, it's just that Great Expecations
is aesthetically integrated, unlike the other Dickens novels, though I'd
insist it has to have the original ending.
Best
Dave
----- Original Message -----
From: "Candice Ward" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Sunday, August 12, 2001 12:41 AM
Subject: Re: Book Review- Moby Dick
> on 8/11/01 12:58 PM, david.bircumshaw at [log in to unmask]
> wrote:
>
> > Um, bits of Middlemarch do fall into your area of objection, Rob, but
old
> > Featherstonehaugh's deathbed is worthy of Tolstoy, and that marvellous
visit
> > to the billiard room in the pub, written by a Victorian woman remember,
and
> > as for the horse-trading details, no net curtains there at all. My
critique
> > of it would be along the lines of it succumbing to wish-fulfilment at
times,
> > fantasy hiding behind the realism.
>
> Spot on, as they say in your land, Dave--and I'd add that the same
> weakness undoes _Villette_ (where we know there was a real fantasy
operating
> to derealize the realism), although I greatly admire the ambition of both
> novels and would rank them as brilliant failures in their own aspirational
> terms. (By an obscure process of association, it occurs to me to ask what
> you make of Willa Cather's _Professor's House_, which I prefer to _My
> Antonia_, personally.)
>
>
> > I really do think Pirrip's transformations, especially with the original
> > bleak ending intact, are the best thing the English Vistorian novel ever
> > did. Some of CD's other stuff is brilliant, but none so sustained and
> > integrated as GE.
>
> Agreed again, but I'm also inclined to protest that _Our Mutual
Friend_
> was robbed even as I pin the blue ribbon on _Great Expectations_!
>
> Now: _Women in Love_?
>
> Candice
>
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