Daily Archives: April 16, 2016

7% done with Middlemarch

B1;C7.1

It’s impossible not to notice how immensely intelligent Eliot is. And not just that she knows a lot of facts – what good are facts? – but that the sign of a truly intelligent person is knowing what the facts mean. Here she uses them to underscore a point she want to make, or to whatever purpose she needs them for. I doubt many of her male contemporaries were half as smart as her.

7% done with Middlemarch

B1;C7

Casaubon only wants a woman who won’t get in his way so he can just keep doing what he’s always done while he gets too old to do anything else.

Dorothea thinks Milton’s daughters were more submissive than they were. She won’t learn Latin just as she won’t learn Casaubon’s language. She can’t love if she feels inferior.

Brooke is teasing Casaubon. I love it.

7% done with Middlemarch

B1;C6.1

“But her feeling towards the vulgar rich was a sort of religious hatred: they had probably made all their money out of high retail prices, and Mrs. Cadwallader detested high prices for everything that was not paid in kind at the Rectory”, and “when a woman is not contradicted, she has no motive for obstinacy in her absurdities.”

Mrs. Cadwallader is great! This novel is great! It’s SO funny, even modern!

6% done with Middlemarch

B1;C6

“I don’t think it can be nice to marry a man with a great soul” Ha!

“always a few grains of common-sense in an ounce of miserliness”

Now I understand why Brooke is, so far, allowing this marriage – he’s a bit of a progressive, a liberal. He’s willing to let his daughters be free, up to a certain point. But maybe he’s like this out of being timid around strong women; probably why he’s a bachelor.

Funny book!

6% done with Middlemarch

B1;C5

Mr. Casaubon’s letter never once used the word love, though Dorothea’s letter says “I am very grateful to you for loving me” right at the start. He seems to want some sort of intellectual buddy or at least someone willing to devote themselves to him but not to lovingly return the sentiment.

Celia, of course, picks up on this immediately. “Oh, Dodo, I hope you will be happy.” she says quite lovingly.

page 162 of 818 of Fortunata and Jacinta: Two Stories of Married Women

Ha! His first words to Jacinta are “big whore”. How arrogant of her to think she can just take the child only because he’s poor. Even Plato has some idea of manners and is even good with the boy. She thinks he’s going to break their necks when they first go in the door, he waves the little boy’s hand at her when she leaves.

page 149 of 818 of Fortunata and Jacinta: Two Stories of Married Women

Two of these revolutions were successful, the moderate Vicalvarada or “Vicálvaro Revolution” of 1854 and the more radical la Gloriosa (Glorious Revolution) in 1868. The latter marks the end of Isabella’s monarchy. The brief rule of the liberal king Amadeo I of Spain ended in the establishment of the First Spanish Republic