Deft Marian and guileless Jasper manage a scene that reveals the romantic in me, and (almost) clears the air for a short time of foreboding.
"... she wished to be wooed in a less off-hand fashion before confessing what was in her heart." And Marian made that happen.
"That Jasper was of cold temperament she had often feared... it seemed as if he knew no word of language which would have called such joyous response from her expectant soul."
But Marian pulled that language from Jasper in the end, and - "It was her first complete escape from the world of intellectual routine, her first taste of life."
I feel the need to read a murder mystery to put myself back in balance :)
Jasper is a bit chilling in this Chapter. Jasper to his male friend Whelpdale in Chapter 22: "I haven't much faith in marrying for love, as you know." Chapter 24 to Marian (rather woodenly I think, and following news of her inheritance): "Love is a very old and common thing, and I believe I love you in the old and common way. I think you beautiful, you seem to me womanly in the best sense, full of charm and sweetness." Are these reconcilable? Which is the real Jasper?
A notable thing about this chapter is that it is almost entirely in Marian's point of view. I think the only exception is telling us about an emotional reaction within Jasper when he touches Marian's hand. So Jasper really is quite opaque to us as he repeatedly tells Marian he loves her and makes a premature proposal of marriage.
While I remain torn - indeed, a bit tormented regarding the veracity of Jasper's love, and Marian's "delusion" (thank you Yiyun for this succinct framing) with respect to loving him - there is a nugget of seeming substance (worthiness) in the seeds of Jasper's feelings for Marian, shaped by her intelligence:
'You called me that before. Do I seem so very thoughtful?’
‘So grave, and sweetly reserved, and with eyes so full of meaning.’
I don't know if this is sufficient to induce a "quivering of delight" (for me!), but I do wonder whether Marian's "quivering" is a response to Jasper's recognition (at least partially) of the worthiness of her mind/thinking, rather than cliched marker's of female "beauty." At least, I would like to imagine this is so.
"Because I have enough of old-fashioned thought to believe that a woman who is worthy of a man's love is higher than he and condescends in giving herself to him." "Whatever I have done or said or thought in the past, that is of no account now. I love you,.."
About as much as I believe this:
"It wasn't I who spoke; it was the demon of failure, of humiliation. ... I have a better brain and a better heart!"
Which means, NOT! I just don't see these leopards changing their spots but Gissing surprises me.
Jasper clearly is strongly attracted to Marian. I don't use the word love because I am sure that is not what he is feeling because I don't think that Jasper knows what love is. He understands nothing but transactional acts. Feelings of any other kind frighten him. His willingness to use Marian to get what he wants - which as Yiyun says is no uncomplicated thing - puts him in the same category as her father, only with somewhat kinder - and so even more insidiously manipulative - words to go along with it.
It is good to see Marian using her power over him. But it is also terrible to see her accepting his empty version of a marriage proposal. "All the satisfactions that I have described would be immensely heightened if they were shared with a woman who loved me." Whaat?
No wonder she has to beg him for reassurance that he really does love her.
Maud's previous remark about Jasper having "no honour" should be ringing in all our ears. No one listens to older sisters : )
Gissing gives such astute character studies. His genuine insight and the dialogue that manages to be both of its time and eerily modern does give surprise.
Like a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis, Marian has taken center stage! Jasper, too, in a way, has come out of his shell, and his ambitions (does that word have the right connotation?, perhaps, desires?, perhaps, hopes? - the feeling expressed in that striking comparison to a specimen under the microscope) seem purer than any of the other characters. I tried, vainly, to compare this to today's young novelists - who are seeking, if not glory, at least, a place at the tiny kid's table of artistic creation. I'm thinking also of the end-of-year lists, and the LitHub article on a Booker Prize judge admitting to being unable to finish all the candidates. Readers and books are shrinking...but that doesn't mean reading will cease.
A chilling - and yet, *oddly inspiring image: "the tiny kid's table of artistic creation."
*Love the evocation of purity and necessity integral to artistic creation. Pure passion, determination, and joy implicitly evoked - and awaiting discovery - at such a "tiny kid's table."
I feel that a lot of Jasper’s statements and thoughts about putting love second to his financial and career aspirations have been effort on his own part to protect himself from the dangers of love. Jasper fell in love with Marian the first moment he met her, and he has been reinforcing his armor all along. 5000 pounds has stripped his armor away.
I may be too generous to Jasper, but I think he's locked in a battle with himself. He has some true feelings for Marion, but he's afraid of the financial risk and the risk to ambition and success by taking another person into his life. It wouldn't surprise me if success wins over love.
Interesting. I paused (for awhile) and pondered that final image: "... Marian looked back. But Jasper was walking quickly away, his head bent, in profound meditation." I was saddened, couldn't shake the image, and tucked it away -- I didn't want to believe it was all just "an artfully constructed morass" (as Helen artfully articulates). You compelled me to return, and reconsider my sentimental desire to hold on to the sense of Jasper "locked in a battle with himself" (thank you Alice). I hoped for something more than a transactional "win."
If nothing else, he is easily distracted and generally preoccupied. I fear it's going to be hard to keep his attention, which makes for a lonely marriage.
what's sincere is his physical grabbing of marian's arm and lots of eye contact and pleading voice -- I think jasper loves her 5,000 pounds but he also doesn't want to be alone.
I do believe that Jasper loves Marian - but then I’m usually on Team Jasper. I like his words “my beautiful, gentle, thoughtful Marian!” He “gets” her, and that’s important. But I fear that there will be a problem with the inheritance. Why else would Alfred lay out where her portion will come from: “Uncle’s share in a wholesale stationery business”? And Marian is slightly miffed that Jasper is willing to wait for the will to be finalized. Uh oh!
i don't ADMIRE jasper but if i were a young woman and a jasper-type came along with i was stuck at home working for my draconian father and i had 5,000 pounds' windfall and this someone complimented my neck and my pallor, then just maybe i'd give him a chance!
Marion: “But tell me, what is your aim in life? What do you understand by success?” I would love to have her pose this question to everyone in the book. The difference between what they do and what they say would be so interesting. I could never answer the question as quickly and surely as Jasper. I’m afraid his prominent omission may be telling. I wish he could surrender to the small part of himself that wants to love.
This observation from Yiyun: "They understand each other so well that there seems to be no space left for illusion. And yet Marian deludes herself into loving Jasper."
Succinctly captures what Gissing has been laying out for us (verbosely) so far in regards to Jasper and Marian. And how, far from the need for 'practicality' the crucial need for illusion in love is entirely missing here.
Delusion not being the same thing as illusion but only it's crueler underside.
I read this chapter as a sort of tango. First one leads, then the other. They come together, they separate but only a few steps. Does he truly love her or not? Will she have him or not? The overriding sentiment is passion but until the dance concludes, the audience can only sit back and enjoy the performance.
So, Jasper has something of the romantic in him after all. I don't doubt his sincerity in this moment, but I do wonder if he can sustain it and for how long. He does value Marian for her mind as well as her beauty, and they are intellectual as well as social equals. But they don't share the same values or goals. I think Marian is only just beginning to figure out what her goals are. "I haven't so much sympathy with literary undertakings as you would like me to have," she tells her father. But now she's taking a spouse just as committed to those undertakings. Meanwhile, Jasper wants to live a gregarious life exciting people's curiosity, with Marian as attaché. Hmm. I understand her attraction. Jasper is smart, lively, and confident, and he is drawn to her, which is flattering, especially as he makes himself out to be above all that. But, as someone once said to me about the romantic possibilities with a mutual acquaintance, "he's not a long term project."
(That being said, I'm looking at future chapter headings for a sense of what's to come, and if Reardon does indeed become practical, maybe anything is possible.)
I loved this chapter -- my mind was urging marian to not fall for jasper's heavy-handed proposal, but my heart was thinking, look, there are worse people, marian, and this is your ticket to a new life -- what really struck me is jasper touching/grabbing marian's arm, which must have been electric at that time. i'm thinking of 6th grade, circa 1980s nyc, when i think i made a similar declaration / move...
“I seem to be new-born, Jasper. Everything in the world is new to me, and I am strange to myself. I have never known an hour of happiness till now, and I can’t believe yet that it has come to me.”
Interesting that Gissing shows how money has so changed a woman, Marion, as well. She suddenly has agency and is more confident. She is a complicated counterpoint to Jasper’s ambition or understanding of money. Also this from the previous chapter regarding Marion. Ironic or not:
Yes, I was taken by Marion as a "changed woman" who both recognized as well as embraced her agency: “She was so much more self-possessed than of wont, and did not seem to treat him with the same deference, the same subdual of her own personality.”
Love the evocation of her "tone of independence" coupled with Jasper's perplexity in encountering her "last words [that] had a slight tone of superiority, the last thing he would have expected from her lips.” Indeed, I succumbed to a bit of a smug smile on Marian's behalf.
How exciting this must have been, coming out in installments, I wonder how long between release dates it was. A bit of economic sense is common when planning a life, marriage, then and now. I have seen cases where great marriages and happy families are the outcome, and other families where it all falls apart. Can we control love like that? Maybe? Lust, of course, is another subject, but how much does that factor in here? I can't wait to hear what Gissing wants to tell us about love and economics after setting us up with the Reardons and Marian/Jasper as our guides.
Frankly, I think this relationship has a decent chance of succeeding. Jasper seems genuinely taken with Marian and while the 5000 pounds greases the wheels, she will not be wealthy by any means and Jasper still needs to succeed as a writer for them to have a comfortable life. As for Marian, she does get something from Jasper in short supply for women in those days: respect. And his wanting to spend his life with her is a pretty nice thing. This being said, if the 5,000 does not materialize, all bets are off!
"antiphony of ardour": my favored phrase of the day. If only one could figure out how to elegantly drop it into casual conversation!
Deft Marian and guileless Jasper manage a scene that reveals the romantic in me, and (almost) clears the air for a short time of foreboding.
"... she wished to be wooed in a less off-hand fashion before confessing what was in her heart." And Marian made that happen.
"That Jasper was of cold temperament she had often feared... it seemed as if he knew no word of language which would have called such joyous response from her expectant soul."
But Marian pulled that language from Jasper in the end, and - "It was her first complete escape from the world of intellectual routine, her first taste of life."
I feel the need to read a murder mystery to put myself back in balance :)
Yes—These weeks I have both the Gissing and another fabulous read from Mick Herron’s Slough House series of Brit political mysteries.
Jasper is a bit chilling in this Chapter. Jasper to his male friend Whelpdale in Chapter 22: "I haven't much faith in marrying for love, as you know." Chapter 24 to Marian (rather woodenly I think, and following news of her inheritance): "Love is a very old and common thing, and I believe I love you in the old and common way. I think you beautiful, you seem to me womanly in the best sense, full of charm and sweetness." Are these reconcilable? Which is the real Jasper?
A notable thing about this chapter is that it is almost entirely in Marian's point of view. I think the only exception is telling us about an emotional reaction within Jasper when he touches Marian's hand. So Jasper really is quite opaque to us as he repeatedly tells Marian he loves her and makes a premature proposal of marriage.
While I remain torn - indeed, a bit tormented regarding the veracity of Jasper's love, and Marian's "delusion" (thank you Yiyun for this succinct framing) with respect to loving him - there is a nugget of seeming substance (worthiness) in the seeds of Jasper's feelings for Marian, shaped by her intelligence:
'You called me that before. Do I seem so very thoughtful?’
‘So grave, and sweetly reserved, and with eyes so full of meaning.’
I don't know if this is sufficient to induce a "quivering of delight" (for me!), but I do wonder whether Marian's "quivering" is a response to Jasper's recognition (at least partially) of the worthiness of her mind/thinking, rather than cliched marker's of female "beauty." At least, I would like to imagine this is so.
I believe this:
"Because I have enough of old-fashioned thought to believe that a woman who is worthy of a man's love is higher than he and condescends in giving herself to him." "Whatever I have done or said or thought in the past, that is of no account now. I love you,.."
About as much as I believe this:
"It wasn't I who spoke; it was the demon of failure, of humiliation. ... I have a better brain and a better heart!"
Which means, NOT! I just don't see these leopards changing their spots but Gissing surprises me.
Jasper clearly is strongly attracted to Marian. I don't use the word love because I am sure that is not what he is feeling because I don't think that Jasper knows what love is. He understands nothing but transactional acts. Feelings of any other kind frighten him. His willingness to use Marian to get what he wants - which as Yiyun says is no uncomplicated thing - puts him in the same category as her father, only with somewhat kinder - and so even more insidiously manipulative - words to go along with it.
It is good to see Marian using her power over him. But it is also terrible to see her accepting his empty version of a marriage proposal. "All the satisfactions that I have described would be immensely heightened if they were shared with a woman who loved me." Whaat?
No wonder she has to beg him for reassurance that he really does love her.
Maud's previous remark about Jasper having "no honour" should be ringing in all our ears. No one listens to older sisters : )
Gissing gives such astute character studies. His genuine insight and the dialogue that manages to be both of its time and eerily modern does give surprise.
Like a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis, Marian has taken center stage! Jasper, too, in a way, has come out of his shell, and his ambitions (does that word have the right connotation?, perhaps, desires?, perhaps, hopes? - the feeling expressed in that striking comparison to a specimen under the microscope) seem purer than any of the other characters. I tried, vainly, to compare this to today's young novelists - who are seeking, if not glory, at least, a place at the tiny kid's table of artistic creation. I'm thinking also of the end-of-year lists, and the LitHub article on a Booker Prize judge admitting to being unable to finish all the candidates. Readers and books are shrinking...but that doesn't mean reading will cease.
A chilling - and yet, *oddly inspiring image: "the tiny kid's table of artistic creation."
*Love the evocation of purity and necessity integral to artistic creation. Pure passion, determination, and joy implicitly evoked - and awaiting discovery - at such a "tiny kid's table."
Taking a poll: Who believes Jasper's love is sincere? I'm with Mary Dykas - I'm a hard NO!
i'd pick being with jasper than being with her father!
Maybe but she was genuinely attracted to his character in the Museum reading room, that “valley of the shadow of the books.”
I feel that a lot of Jasper’s statements and thoughts about putting love second to his financial and career aspirations have been effort on his own part to protect himself from the dangers of love. Jasper fell in love with Marian the first moment he met her, and he has been reinforcing his armor all along. 5000 pounds has stripped his armor away.
The chapter is called "Jasper's Magnanimity." You can almost taste the irony.
Gissing hides no cards here.
Yes, this struck me too. It's like his proposal is a charitable act. The author's attitude certainly doesn't seem propitious.
Love the cynicism. And Gissing clearly knows his Cynics.
I may be too generous to Jasper, but I think he's locked in a battle with himself. He has some true feelings for Marion, but he's afraid of the financial risk and the risk to ambition and success by taking another person into his life. It wouldn't surprise me if success wins over love.
Hard no. And sadness that Marian, so starved for affection and validation should fall headlong into this artfully constructed morass.
I was on the fence till I read the last two lines of the chapter.
Interesting. I paused (for awhile) and pondered that final image: "... Marian looked back. But Jasper was walking quickly away, his head bent, in profound meditation." I was saddened, couldn't shake the image, and tucked it away -- I didn't want to believe it was all just "an artfully constructed morass" (as Helen artfully articulates). You compelled me to return, and reconsider my sentimental desire to hold on to the sense of Jasper "locked in a battle with himself" (thank you Alice). I hoped for something more than a transactional "win."
Jasper seems ashamed or regretful - if I were Marian, that's how I would have interpreted his quick walk away, head bent...
If nothing else, he is easily distracted and generally preoccupied. I fear it's going to be hard to keep his attention, which makes for a lonely marriage.
Good point. He's already thinking about something else.
what's sincere is his physical grabbing of marian's arm and lots of eye contact and pleading voice -- I think jasper loves her 5,000 pounds but he also doesn't want to be alone.
I do believe that Jasper loves Marian - but then I’m usually on Team Jasper. I like his words “my beautiful, gentle, thoughtful Marian!” He “gets” her, and that’s important. But I fear that there will be a problem with the inheritance. Why else would Alfred lay out where her portion will come from: “Uncle’s share in a wholesale stationery business”? And Marian is slightly miffed that Jasper is willing to wait for the will to be finalized. Uh oh!
i don't ADMIRE jasper but if i were a young woman and a jasper-type came along with i was stuck at home working for my draconian father and i had 5,000 pounds' windfall and this someone complimented my neck and my pallor, then just maybe i'd give him a chance!
Indeed!
Marion: “But tell me, what is your aim in life? What do you understand by success?” I would love to have her pose this question to everyone in the book. The difference between what they do and what they say would be so interesting. I could never answer the question as quickly and surely as Jasper. I’m afraid his prominent omission may be telling. I wish he could surrender to the small part of himself that wants to love.
This observation from Yiyun: "They understand each other so well that there seems to be no space left for illusion. And yet Marian deludes herself into loving Jasper."
Succinctly captures what Gissing has been laying out for us (verbosely) so far in regards to Jasper and Marian. And how, far from the need for 'practicality' the crucial need for illusion in love is entirely missing here.
Delusion not being the same thing as illusion but only it's crueler underside.
I read this chapter as a sort of tango. First one leads, then the other. They come together, they separate but only a few steps. Does he truly love her or not? Will she have him or not? The overriding sentiment is passion but until the dance concludes, the audience can only sit back and enjoy the performance.
So, Jasper has something of the romantic in him after all. I don't doubt his sincerity in this moment, but I do wonder if he can sustain it and for how long. He does value Marian for her mind as well as her beauty, and they are intellectual as well as social equals. But they don't share the same values or goals. I think Marian is only just beginning to figure out what her goals are. "I haven't so much sympathy with literary undertakings as you would like me to have," she tells her father. But now she's taking a spouse just as committed to those undertakings. Meanwhile, Jasper wants to live a gregarious life exciting people's curiosity, with Marian as attaché. Hmm. I understand her attraction. Jasper is smart, lively, and confident, and he is drawn to her, which is flattering, especially as he makes himself out to be above all that. But, as someone once said to me about the romantic possibilities with a mutual acquaintance, "he's not a long term project."
(That being said, I'm looking at future chapter headings for a sense of what's to come, and if Reardon does indeed become practical, maybe anything is possible.)
I loved this chapter -- my mind was urging marian to not fall for jasper's heavy-handed proposal, but my heart was thinking, look, there are worse people, marian, and this is your ticket to a new life -- what really struck me is jasper touching/grabbing marian's arm, which must have been electric at that time. i'm thinking of 6th grade, circa 1980s nyc, when i think i made a similar declaration / move...
Oh Jasper. "It is not merit that succeeds in my line; it is merit plus opportunity. Marrying now, I cut myself off from opportunity, that’s all.’
“I seem to be new-born, Jasper. Everything in the world is new to me, and I am strange to myself. I have never known an hour of happiness till now, and I can’t believe yet that it has come to me.”
Interesting that Gissing shows how money has so changed a woman, Marion, as well. She suddenly has agency and is more confident. She is a complicated counterpoint to Jasper’s ambition or understanding of money. Also this from the previous chapter regarding Marion. Ironic or not:
“Money is a great fortifier of self-respect.”
Yes, I was taken by Marion as a "changed woman" who both recognized as well as embraced her agency: “She was so much more self-possessed than of wont, and did not seem to treat him with the same deference, the same subdual of her own personality.”
Love the evocation of her "tone of independence" coupled with Jasper's perplexity in encountering her "last words [that] had a slight tone of superiority, the last thing he would have expected from her lips.” Indeed, I succumbed to a bit of a smug smile on Marian's behalf.
How exciting this must have been, coming out in installments, I wonder how long between release dates it was. A bit of economic sense is common when planning a life, marriage, then and now. I have seen cases where great marriages and happy families are the outcome, and other families where it all falls apart. Can we control love like that? Maybe? Lust, of course, is another subject, but how much does that factor in here? I can't wait to hear what Gissing wants to tell us about love and economics after setting us up with the Reardons and Marian/Jasper as our guides.
Frankly, I think this relationship has a decent chance of succeeding. Jasper seems genuinely taken with Marian and while the 5000 pounds greases the wheels, she will not be wealthy by any means and Jasper still needs to succeed as a writer for them to have a comfortable life. As for Marian, she does get something from Jasper in short supply for women in those days: respect. And his wanting to spend his life with her is a pretty nice thing. This being said, if the 5,000 does not materialize, all bets are off!