![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Humbled by his cruelty, Gwendolen in her anguish seeks to reform herself, acknowledge the weakness that got her into this mess, and become better by hooking into Deronda's faultless goodness. In Middlemarch, the cold-hearted, narrow-minded scholar Casaubon inspires some sympathy in his loneliness Grandcourt inspires only loathing. Then - for reasons mostly mercenary - she accepts a nightmare marriage with the villainous, controlling, heartless aristo Grandcourt (even his name is heavy-handed). Gwendolen Harleth, the spoiled, utterly self-absorbed young beauty is more interesting because she is so flawed and contradictory. Eliot can be so fine with complex characters, and here expends pages upon pages upon pages on describing their every thought, feeling, heartbeat. Perhaps Eliot reached that point in some artists' work where they move beyond themselves, into something darker, more opaque, less digestible (I'm thinking Beethoven's late quartets), and leave us mortals behind.īut Deronda. More than a bit, actually, especially since I've read Middlemarch at least four times and will always believe it to be one of the greatest of all novels in English. ![]()
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