I finally finished “Middlemarch”. I’m glad I got to become acquainted with the literary force of Ms. Evans. I am heavily impressed with the way she crafts a plot, seeing all the threads come together. She probably is better than Charles Dickens when it comes to these pure skills of composing a novel. Nevertheless, as Christopher Hitchens observed, there is a reason why Dickens is a bigger name, and it isn’t because George Eliot is a woman, or at least not in the sense of her being a victim of irrational prejudice. She is, perhaps as a woman, a bit too genteel. Dickens gives us a more bracing look into the darkness of the soul. Eliot’s worst crime in this novel is that a man cheated another out of an inheritance. It’s not very exciting stuff. But who said that novels have to be fiery spectacles? We are suppose to be talking about literature, not pop-fiction. Yet, we are also not talking about deep explorations into the torments of the soul, either. This is not “Magic Mountain” or Dostoevsky. The disappointments and strains of marriage do not make for the most gripping dramas.
I guess I’m saying, although I am glad to have “Middlemarch” in my reading history, I believe that I could have done without it in my life. It is fairly long, almost a thousand pages, and takes a lot of time. Mind you, though, if time were not so limited, I would not mind book-blogging the novel. It is put together beautifully and the writing is solid, mixed with juicy bits of wit along the way, and it does cast some light on the hard conservatism of Anglo society. In the end, it just feels more like an old woman’s novel to me and cannot fully engage my more primal sensibilities.
Accordingly, my bedtime reading has not been very fun for a while now. So, I am going to treat myself to something a little nasty: “Living Dead Girl” by Elizabeth Scott. This is not literature. Just dark, horrific psychosexual fun. After this, we will take up Hilary Mantel’s “Wolf Hall”. Right now, I deserve to wallow in the self-indulgence of my naked id.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
