Status
Available
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Collection
Publication
Signet Classics (1963), Paperback, 510 pages
Description
This edition of Meredith's satirical novel of manners reprints the text of 1897, which incorporated Meredith's revisions to the first edition of 1879. The editor has corrected some errors which escaped Meredith's attention and has provided exceptionally useful notes on the novel. "Backgrounds" includes Meredith's "Essay on Comedy and the Uses of the Comic Spirit." "The Critical Essays" are by Robert D. Mayo, Richard B. Hudson, Jenni Calder, Gillian Beer, John Goode, Charles J. Hill, Michael Sundell, Virginia Woolf, John Lucas, and Robert M. Adams. A Bibliography is also included.
User reviews
LibraryThing member branful
I was sympathetic with Sir Willoughby until he elected to employ the tricks on Clara Middleton in Chapter XL, after his marriage proposal was snapped by Laetitia Dale in the midnight conference with her. After that, Sir Willouby would fall in everyone's esteem. I resent the unfortunate twist in the
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plot. Prior to that, he seemed passable, just another romatic hero dreaming to fulfil his impossible dream. • Have you seen the 1956 film "Giant," directed by George Stevens, starring James Dean and Liz Taylor? On seeing it for the third time, I noticed that it contained some propaganda on Women's Lib. (The film also brings back memory of another film "Five Easy Piece," in which Jack Nicholson talks about the Big Thaw in Alaska, with a woman resembling Yoko Ono, though "Five Easy Pieces" does not stand anywhere near Womoen's Lib.) This novel has much to contribute, I think, to the Women's Lib movement, in that it gives a good description of the poor state the women were thrown, unable to sustain themselves, and subject to men's initiatives with every which subject. In this sense, this novel is quite different from the works by Jane Austen or Thackeray or Henry James. The novel's treatment of Clara's assertion is quite fair. It doesn't depict her as peculiar or flippant. Rather, it supplements the general plight of women by Mrs. Mountstuart's confession to Clara. • I guess this is where this novel struck and deeply influenced Soseki Natsume. It tells difficulty of social independence for women. It tells near impossibility of romantic love between a man and a woman. The situation is generally unchanged today. • Speaking of George Stevens, I guess this novel could have been filmed by him, in an ideal world, starring his long-time cohort, Katharine Hepburn as Clara Middleton. Show Less
LibraryThing member Stevil2001
'The world has faults; glaciers have crevices, mountains have chasms; but is not the effect of the whole sublime? Not to admire the mountain and the glacier because they can be cruel, seems to me . . . And the world is beautiful.'
'The world of nature, yes. The world of
'Yes.'
'My love, I suspect you to be thinking of the world of ballrooms.'
'I am thinking of the world that contains real and great generosity, true heroism. We see it round us.'
'We read of it. The world of the romance writer!'
'No: the living world. I am sure it is our duty to love it. I am sure we weaken ourselves if we do not.' (100)
This book was recommended to me by a graduate student I met at NAVSA; when I told him about my project on Victorian scientist novels, he asked if I had read The Egoist. I had not. I had actually never read any George Meredith, as far as I know. Now that I have read it, George Meredith strikes me as one of those Victorian novelists we are probably better off not reading. The Egoist is supposedly about the necessity of comedy to puncture egoism-- but it strikes me as something of a bad idea to begin your supposed paean to comedy with an incredibly unfunny and overly pedantic explanation of why humor is important.
Anyway, there are moments of what I'm interested in in this overly long and tedious novel, but there are better examples. Sir Willoughby Patterne is a man of science, sort of vaguely defined-- I don't think we ever learn what kind of science he actually does even though he's in his laboratory a lot of time-- and this does affect his romantic relationships. His egoism means he always needs to get his way, is always trying to bend his fiancée to his will. Science doesn't seem to be to blame though, because even though he's in the laboratory so much, he supposedly mostly does it because science is popular; his true passion is sport (46). On the other hand, his devotion to the laboratory is more complete than that of his rivals (71), so even if it's not his passion per se, he throws himself into it.
There is an emphasis on how he sees the world; as my epigraph above indicates, he doesn't see the world the same as his fiancée Clara, because his perceptions come from science, while hers come from ballrooms and romances. The biggest consequence of his egoism seems to be that he thinks he understands himself more than he actually does understand himself. That seems a scientific problem-- the scientist has to have the ego to believe they understand the world better, and that ego is not always warranted-- but other Victorian scientist novels deal with the topic better than Meredith does. Stay away if you can.
'The world of nature, yes. The world of
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men?''Yes.'
'My love, I suspect you to be thinking of the world of ballrooms.'
'I am thinking of the world that contains real and great generosity, true heroism. We see it round us.'
'We read of it. The world of the romance writer!'
'No: the living world. I am sure it is our duty to love it. I am sure we weaken ourselves if we do not.' (100)
This book was recommended to me by a graduate student I met at NAVSA; when I told him about my project on Victorian scientist novels, he asked if I had read The Egoist. I had not. I had actually never read any George Meredith, as far as I know. Now that I have read it, George Meredith strikes me as one of those Victorian novelists we are probably better off not reading. The Egoist is supposedly about the necessity of comedy to puncture egoism-- but it strikes me as something of a bad idea to begin your supposed paean to comedy with an incredibly unfunny and overly pedantic explanation of why humor is important.
Anyway, there are moments of what I'm interested in in this overly long and tedious novel, but there are better examples. Sir Willoughby Patterne is a man of science, sort of vaguely defined-- I don't think we ever learn what kind of science he actually does even though he's in his laboratory a lot of time-- and this does affect his romantic relationships. His egoism means he always needs to get his way, is always trying to bend his fiancée to his will. Science doesn't seem to be to blame though, because even though he's in the laboratory so much, he supposedly mostly does it because science is popular; his true passion is sport (46). On the other hand, his devotion to the laboratory is more complete than that of his rivals (71), so even if it's not his passion per se, he throws himself into it.
There is an emphasis on how he sees the world; as my epigraph above indicates, he doesn't see the world the same as his fiancée Clara, because his perceptions come from science, while hers come from ballrooms and romances. The biggest consequence of his egoism seems to be that he thinks he understands himself more than he actually does understand himself. That seems a scientific problem-- the scientist has to have the ego to believe they understand the world better, and that ego is not always warranted-- but other Victorian scientist novels deal with the topic better than Meredith does. Stay away if you can.
Show Less
LibraryThing member snash
A convoluted plot of betrothals and break ups but primarily a psychological study of the various characters, most particularly the egotist. Well written but slow reading
Subjects
Language
Original publication date
1879
Physical description
510 p.; 7 inches
ISBN
0451501918 / 9780451501912