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/lit/ - Literature

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18391021 No.18391021 [Reply] [Original]

Has anyone here read George Eliot?
Is she worth reading?
Somehow I've ended up with Middlemarch and The Mill in the Floss but I don't really feel like starting them yet, what am I in for exactly?

>> No.18391117

>>18391021
I can't vouch for Mill on the Floss but Middlemarch is great. Starts with two bad marriages, and follows them as each person's ambitions and expectations are crushed. It's long and all, but it really needs that space to let you see everyone's perspective. Haven't read it in 4 years but I can recall nearly every character like it was yesterday; they spring to mind as examples quite a lot.
In the background there's a lot of town politics which can seem a little dull at times but it does build up to some quite gripping stuff in the final section. Also there's a really cute romantic subplot.

>> No.18391304

>>18391117
Oh that sounds encouraging, does it drag on much?
>Haven't read it in 4 years but I can recall nearly every character like it was yesterday; they spring to mind as examples quite a lot
I hope I have the same experience

>> No.18392873

>>18391021
I haven't read any of hers yet, but someone I know who's read a LOT of classics says middlemarch is the best of them all, so...

>> No.18394188

>>18391304
Different anon, but I wouldn't say it drags on any more than other long 19C English novels. If you've read a few you'll have your own opinion.
>>18392873
It's about the lives of people in a small town in the English countryside. The characters are well realised, but it's not particularly plot heavy or high handed. It does what it sets out to do and it does it perfectly ;whether you will like it or not is up to you. It's a comfy book.

>> No.18394198

I have a copy of George Eliot’s Middlemarch but what does this image have to with him? Is that his wife?

>> No.18394605

Middlemarch is flat out the greatest English language novel

>> No.18394703

>>18394605
I loved silas marner since high school and meant to read middlemarch since, I will have to read it after I finish Anna Karenina.

>> No.18395274

>In a 2019 blog post, Lavery explained that Eliot, born Mary Anne Evans in 1819, “relished being thought of as male, and was disappointed when people thought otherwise.” The only reason Eliot is typically referred to as “she,” according to Lavery, is because Charles Dickens outed her in a widely circulated 1858 letter.
Does her writing come off as feminine?

>> No.18395562

>>18391021
I'm halfway through Middlemarch right now. It's fantastic. She captures ideas beautifully and I keep finding myself drifting off into thought every few pages. It's taking me a while but I think it might turn out to be my favourite novel.

>> No.18395945

>>18391021
yes. no.

i mean im not going to suggest you read fiction ive read middlemarch its good but its a complete waste of time

>> No.18395960

I hated Middlemarch in the beginning, but came to quickly like it more than I thought I would

>> No.18396031

>>18395274
>Charles Dickens outed her in a widely circulated 1858 letter.
Holy based!

>> No.18396534

>>18391021
>she
I'm not trying to shitpost, this is a genuine question: do you call pen name authors by their real or pen pronouns?

>> No.18396552

>>18391021
Nietzsche destroyed her

They are rid of the Christian God and now believe all the more firmly that they must cling to Christian morality. That is an English consistency; we do not wish to hold it against little moralistic females à la Eliot. In England one must rehabilitate oneself after every little emancipation from theology by showing in a veritably awe-inspiring manner what a moral fanatic one is. That is the penance they pay there.

We others hold otherwise. When one gives up the Christian faith, one pulls the right to Christian morality out from under one's feet. This morality is by no means self-evident: this point has to be exhibited again and again, despite the English flatheads. Christianity is a system, a whole view of things thought out together. By breaking one main concept out of it, the faith in God, one breaks the whole: nothing necessary remains in one's hands. Christianity presupposes that man does not know, cannot know, what is good for him, what evil: he believes in God, who alone knows it. Christian morality is a command; its origin is transcendent; it is beyond all criticism, all right to criticism; it has truth only if God is the truth--it stands and falls with faith in God.

When the English actually believe that they know "intuitively" what is good and evil, when they therefore suppose that they no longer require Christianity as the guarantee of morality, we merely witness the effects of the dominion of the Christian value judgment and an expression of the strength and depth of this dominion: such that the origin of English morality has been forgotten, such that the very conditional character of its right to existence is no longer felt. For the English, morality is not yet a problem.

>> No.18396570

>>18396534
This might sound stupid but I honestly just thought it was a woman's name somehow, at least that's how I always saw it
Apparently he liked being called he/him so i'll stick with that

>> No.18397487

>>18391021
I liked her essay on "Silly Women Novelists". It felt like one of those forum posts where bad writing is ripped apart, just a few hundreds of years earlier.

>> No.18397887

>>18391021
I read Silas Marner, and it's sentimental Anglo crap.
Only read it if you enjoy conventional, 19th century English 'realist' novels (which would make me doubt your intelligence), and if you despise thinking. Even Dickens is better.
Otherwise go read Sterne. Or Henry James, who had a brain.

>> No.18397979

>>18396552
>In England one must rehabilitate oneself after every little emancipation from theology by showing in a veritably awe-inspiring manner what a moral fanatic one is. That is the penance they pay there.

The more I read Nietzsche, the more I am astounded at his understanding of human vices.

>> No.18398024

>>18395274
based ftm tomboy king