In Love with George Eliot by Kathy O'Shaughnessy

Author:Kathy O'Shaughnessy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC014000, BIO006000, BIO007000, BIO022000
Publisher: Scribe Publications Pty Ltd
Published: 2019-11-04T16:00:00+00:00

***

The following morning, as usual, Marian was roving over her conversation with Emily. She was curious now to read the piece she’d written thirteen years ago. She found it in Lewes’ study.

Silly Novels by Lady Novelists are a genus with many species, determined by the particular quality of silliness that predominates in them — the frothy, the prosy, the pious, or the pedantic. But it is a mixture of all these — a composite order of feminine fatuity — that produces the largest class of such novels, which we shall distinguish as the mind-and-millinery species.

The novels lacked realism, she said, and she quoted from Rank and Beauty, where the heroine first sets eyes on her love object, who happens to be the Prime Minister. Perhaps, warned Marian, the words Prime Minister suggest to you a wrinkled or obese sexagenarian; but pray dismiss the image …

“The door opened again, and Lord Rupert Conway entered. Evelyn gave one glance. It was enough; she was not disappointed. His tall figure, the distinguished simplicity of his air — it was a living Vandyke, a cavalier, one of his noble cavalier ancestors, or one to whom her fancy had always likened him, who long of yore had, with an Umfraville, fought the Paynim far beyond sea. Was this reality?”

Very little like it, certainly.

The last dry remark was her own, and a spontaneous smile lit her face as she read it. What fun she had writing this piece! And really, she couldn’t help admiring the skill with which she dissected pretensions. In Compensation:

“Oh, I am so happy, dear gran’mamma,” prattles a child of four and a half. “— I have seen — I have seen such a delightful person; he is like everything beautiful — like the smell of sweet flowers, and the view from Ben Lomond; … and his forehead is like that distant sea … there seems no end — no end; or like the clusters of stars I like best to look at on a warm fine night …”

The prodigy, says Marian, has a mother who is also a genius, extraordinarily learned and deep, who has from her great facility in learning languages, read the Scriptures in their original tongues.

Of course! cackles Marian (the emphasis is hers). Greek and Hebrew are mere play to a heroine; Sanskrit is no more than abc to her; and she can talk with perfect correctness in any language except English. Poor men! There are so few of you who know even Hebrew …

Reading the piece now, all these years later, Marian felt as if she were in a cage, peering out at her old self. How free she had been! Now she was conscious of watchful eyes.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.