When I first started reading this book for our local CLASSICS BOOK CLUB I had just come off of 2 NONFICTION books and was a bit frustrated - I wasn't getting "the point". A friend in Book Club said, "It's just a story - a novel - about a family". Ok, so I settled in, relaxed and went with it. About halfway through I couldn't put it down.
Some of the author's sentences run a full paragraph long. In the beginning, I felt she should "get on with it", but after a while, I didn't even notice. What I DID notice is that GEORGE ELIOT can uniquely describe in detail, a situation or an emotion that may be hard for most of us to put into words. WOW!
The story itself progressed beautifully and each character was fully developed - I felt as if I knew each one of them. The main character, MAGGIE was faced with such challenges ALL of her life. All she really wanted was to be loved and recognized - first by her father and mother, then her brother, then other family/friends and ultimately by a LOVER.....
I want to share some examples of GEORGE ELIOT'S brilliant writing talent. This and her story-telling is why her book is considered a "CLASSIC". As you read the following, keep in mind that it was written in the year 1860.
Pg 37
We keep apart when we have quarrelled, express ourselves in well-bred phrases, and in this way preserve a dignified alienation, showing much firmness on one side, and swallowing much grief on the other.
Pg 40
Our delight in the sunshine on the deep-bladed grass to-day, might be no more than the faint perception of wearied souls, if it were not for the sunshine and the grass in the far-off years which still live in us, and transform our perception into love.
Pg 71
Mrs. Tulliver had lived fourteen years with her husband, yet she retained in all the freshness of her early married life a facility of saying things which drove him in the opposite direction to the one she desired. Some minds are wonderful for keeping their bloom in this way, as a patriarchal gold-fish apparently retains to the last its youthful illusion that it can swim in a straight line beyond the encircling glass.
Pg 215
But you youngsters nowadays think you're to begin with living well and working easy; you've no notion of running afoot before you get on horseback. Now, you must remember what you are - you're a lad of sixteen, trained to nothing particular. There's heaps of your sort, like so many pebbles, made to fit in nowhere.
Pg 259
When uncultured minds, confined to a narrow range of personal experience, are under the pressure of continued misfortune, their inward life is apt to become a perpetually repeated round of sad and bitter thoughts: the same words, the same scenes are revolved over and over again, the same mood accompanies them - the end of the year finds them as much what they were at the beginning as if they were machines set to a recurrent series of movements.
Pg 340
And there was that slight pressure of the hands, and momentary meeting of the eyes, which will often leave a little lady with a slight flush and smile on her face that do not subside immediately when the door is closed, and with an inclination to walk up and down the room rather than to seat herself quietly at her embroidery, or other rational and improving occupation.
Pg 375
But this must end some time - perhaps it ended very soon, and only seemed long, as a minute's dream does.
Pg 402
The middle-aged, who have lived through their strongest emotions, but are yet in the time when memory is still half passionate and not merely contemplative, should surely be a sort of natural priesthood, whom life has disciplined and consecrated to be the refuge and rescue of early stumblers and victims of self-despair.
Ok if you've read this far, what do you think? Incredible? Or too wordy for your taste?
JOAN
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