From: "judy prince" <[log in to unmask]>
> Tagging off this part of your message, Dave, let me recommend a lovely
> lengthy Grauniad article on George Eliot and her use of Spinoza's
> philosophy for Middlemarch. An excerpt below ("Henry" is the young Henry
> James as critic), and then the URL:
>
> "Marian & Fred & Spinoza
> But you can see why Henry didn't have much time for Fred. He's not Henry's
> type of thing at all - just a simple boy, with a streak of selfishness. He
> likes to ride and play cards and spend more money than he has. Fred is in
> love with a bright, plain girl called Mary Garth, who is not convinced
> Fred is worthy of her love. On reflection, Fred agrees. Of the Three Love
> Problems that dominate Middlemarch - Dorothea and Casaubon, Lydgate and
> Rosamund, Fred and Mary - Fred's would seem the least edifying.
Perhaps we should simply dump _Middlemarch_ and turn to _Daniel Deronda_
instead? <g>
But even there, Eliot refuses to allow the possibility of a relationship
between Deronda and Gwendolyn, in the same way she [imaginatively] rules out
a match between Lydgate and Dorothea.
What was it with the Victorians, men and women novelists both, that they'd
skate around even the *possibility of a relationship between a Strong Woman
and a Strong Man?
Dickins didn't even bother to skate -- he simply deployed the Doll Girl
stereotype without question.
Wilkie Collins is the weirdest and the worst in -- is it? -- _The Woman in
White_, where (if I've got this right) the subordinate heroine
(unconventional) is obviously attracted to the strange guy, whose name I
can't remember, who kept pet mice.
At least Wilkie Collins takes it seriously enough to feel compelled
eventually to kill-off the Rodent Fancier (a premature candidate for a
starring part in _The Secret Agent_).
Sorry this is a bit blurred in its references -- I could google the names
and plots, but I'm sure dave will remind me without having to look them up.
R. who prefers to Victorian poets (or at least some of them) to the
novelists -- at least Browning married EBB!!!
(I mean, not as if this wasn't happening in "real life" at the time -- Eliot
herself and Lewes, Browning and EBB, the Webbs later. Fiction refusing to
keep up with reality, you might think. R.)
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