tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post4119747956309731855..comments2024-03-27T16:48:21.039-05:00Comments on Wuthering <br>Expectations: We get a deal o' useless things about us, only because we've got the money to spend.Amateur Reader (Tom)http://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-9656337002751360782009-06-29T17:19:55.368-05:002009-06-29T17:19:55.368-05:00So Eliot's really great touch with Mrs. Tulliv...So Eliot's really great touch with Mrs. Tulliver is the moment she returns with the teapot and castors and sugar-tongs. The family, and the reader, probably, is tired of her irrationality and is ready to move on with the story, the what-happens-next. But Mrs. Tulliver is <i>not</i> ready. That's the moment when, just as you say, the nature of my pity for her changed, deepened, really.<br /><br />One of many great, audacious touches. And now I want to write more about Mrs. Glegg and her broad selfishness (which treats at least her family's interests as her own) compared to Mrs. Pullet's concern for others, which is actually completely selfish.<br /><br />I had written a bit about Mrs. Glegg and Bob Jakin's thumb, but I thought I was going on too long, which I am probably doing now.<br /><br />Congratulations on the book, by the way!<br /><br />Verbivore, you'll find plenty to write about in <i>The Mill on the Floss</i>, if you want. But the Ramuz and Claudel posts were so interesting, and what about <i>The Black Spider</i>? So, no hurry, I guess.Amateur Reader (Tom)https://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-75696709485873575762009-06-29T05:06:44.136-05:002009-06-29T05:06:44.136-05:00Other projects have kept me from Eliot for the tim...Other projects have kept me from Eliot for the time being, but The Mill on the Floss is eyeing me reproachfully from the shelf. I look forward to meeting these women soon!verbivorehttp://incurablelogophilia.wordpress.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-25922582371415184602009-06-28T09:37:04.651-05:002009-06-28T09:37:04.651-05:00Thank you for reminding me just how brilliant the ...Thank you for reminding me just how brilliant the Dodson sisters are. I think you'll really enjoy the face-off between Bob Jakins and Mrs Glegg as well as Mrs Glegg's eventual rising to the occasion...<br /><br />Though Mrs Tulliver is precisely the kind of woman I never want to be (and deliberately set up so by GE, I think), there's also a real brilliance in how well GE shows us that she has been raised to be ineffectual and even selected as a mate because she's not "too 'cute," unlike her unfortunate daughter, that "mistake of nature." So she becomes pitiable and not just pitiful when she tries to preserve the things in her life that have given it value to her--like her tea pot. (I have a cherished tea pot too, which I would hate to see auctioned off!).<br /><br />BTW, your remarks on the Bossuet chapter are very interesting. I think a lot of what is at stake there is establishing a thick enough context for Maggie's dilemmas that we will feel at once the impossibility of simply effecting change or transformation and the necessity of finding some other way forward--spiritually as well as morally. She does (GE, that is) make a few pointed comments, too, about religious convictions and practices arising out of social and economic circumstances, part of educating us to see them as social rituals and mores rather than acts or beliefs truly sanctioned by divine will.<br /><br />Thinking about this wonderful (if somewhat uneven) novel makes me sorry I didn't choose <i>it</i> for our summer reading at The Valve. All GE, all the time--you could do much worse! But <i>Villette</i> is good too, in its own very different, rather morbid way.Rohan Maitzenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12111722115617352412noreply@blogger.com