18 July 2018: "When Jane Austen died, her last words were 'Pray for me, oh pray for me'; when George Eliot died, she is reported to have said 'Tell them the pain is on the left side'. The shift which took place between the two novelists is movingly registered in those two utterances: to have gained all the scientific ability to measure and locate human pain without the redeeming belief in any ultimate remedy for that pain — that is the predicament George Eliot 'gave out in intensified form' in
Middlemarch, and it is one of which we too, living in a later century, have an intimate knowledge" (Wilhelm 56-7).
Preparing for my seminar on the nineteenth-century novel, I read the lines above earlier today and found them quite persuasive and moving.
Work Cited
Wilhelm, Cherry. "Conservative Reform in
Middlemarch."
Theoria, vol. 53, October 1979, pp. 47-47.
No comments:
Post a Comment