I hope so. Jasper has been kept on the sidelines too long as has Marion. Reardon’s troubles are getting tiresome and a rivalry for Amy’s affection with Marion in the mix would liven things up in a welcomed way.
I wonder how much influence Amy's mother has. She's off in the shadows, as is Willie, but I would hope that they are more on the Reardons's mind. No person is an island, after all, even poor Biffen, who the novel says could disappear with no one to mind. The jealousy that Reardon feels toward Biffen is believable, but he seems to be imputing his own lack of power in his own relationships into Biffen's life. If Reardon was in a better place (mentally, financially, socially) he would know that it's impossible to believe that anyone is completely alone. He's in need of maternal comfort (not Homer or Shakespeare) that he's really not getting, and I'm inclined to either blame Amy or her mother. As I learned in a Henry James course, of all places, follow the money trail.
Amy had pretty much made it clear that this is all about appearances both of their living conditions as well as her husband's career. She cannot live with a clerk, nor can she downsize her home (or god forbid take in laundry). This is a gut punch for Reardon who has got to see now that she doesn't (a probably never did) love him, she loved the fantasy of the life she thought she'd have. If he won the lottery she'd come back and be happy and he'd still be miserable knowing the reason she is there is due to the material trappings. Like Bernadette Peters said in The Jerk... "It's not about the money, it's the stuff!"
I have experienced and witnessed major downturns in a family’s financial fortunes. Adjusting to a whole new lifestyle is very hard. But if there’s a commitment, the tough get going. Good for Reardon.
If you’re up for a challenge, I would go with The Golden Bowl. I don’t know the ending, but I don’t think it’s sad, but a bit claustrophobic --the human relationships described are so intricately woven. I wish I could hear Colm Toibin reading it
If you like Toibin and are interested in Henry James try The Master. Its a novel but about the inner life of James. You also get insight into the inspiration for some of his literature.
The events of this chapter exceeded my expectations of the title ("The Parting"). Edwin was leaping off of ledges - first in his spontaneous decision during his conversation with Carter - "A minute more of pause, and he could not have faced the humiliation. His face burned, his tongue was parched."
And with Amy, much more and sustained effort was required to step off the ledge - "... in a man to whom such self-assertion is a matter of conscious effort, tremor of the nerves will always interfere with the line of conduct he has conceived in advance." Edwin hung in there, But Amy "... glared like the animal that defends itself with tooth and claw."
I was dubious of the vacation method of rejuvenating Edwin's writing career, but frankly didn't expect Amy's "I am certainly not the wife of a clerk who is paid so much a week."
Gissing's descriptions of Amy are so vivid! Early on he describes her as: strong neck, splendid muscles from the ear downward, newly finished head which some honest sculptor has wrought with his own hand from the marble block; there was a suggestion of 'planes' and of the chisel. And now with the comparison of a glaring animal. I wonder who Gissing used as a model for this character! You wonder when the book came out did someone sees themself as this character. Yikes!
As painful as this chapter was, it felt like a release. Finally, it all comes out. To me, Amy has been cold and judgmental, but I’m also trying to think of what it would be like for a woman to have so little agency in the 19th century. I was also thinking in this chapter, what about the child? Does he still exist? He has become a non-entity. Can Reardon truly care so little for his own son?
The most chilling, ominous line for me: “It will be long enough yet before I think contemptuously of you. You know that when a light is suddenly extinguished, the image of it still shows before your eyes. But at last comes the darkness.” ‘At last’ comes the darkness. Shudder.
A lot of foreshadowing with Reardon .. . And no one really is listening to his desperation. Amy thinks she can tackle it with practicality. That is why they keep missing one another.
"Before falling asleep he heard the two familiar clocks strike eight; this evening they were in unusual accord, and the querulous notes from the workhouse sounded b/w the deeper ones from St. Marleybone...the matter seemed to have a peculiar interest for him, and in dreams he worried himself with a grotesque speculation thence derived."
Interesting that Gissing doesn't show us the worried dream. What might it be? When I first read this line, I thought that he would take comfort in the sonic accord, that they signified he had made the right decision for him and for his health, despite how painful it might be to part with Amy. But that last clause makes me wonder about my interpretation.
One would like to believe that Amy’s insistence that Edwin fully commit to his writing is an expression of confidence in her husband. Reardon, however, by now surely recognizes that it is not an expression of confidence but merely her wish to maintain status and hope for a better income in the future than he can earn by other means. He thus faces the realization that there is no one (including himself) who truly believes in his ability as a writer.
It's funny because I think she does truly believe in his talent but she can't understand why he can't just produce it at will. It is a blind spot in her, not through lack of belief, I don't think.
Amy shows extraordinary agency for a woman in 1880s London. The decision to marry or remain married to someone is very subjective and complicated. The legalization of divorce is considered an enlightenment breakthrough. She is married to a man who asks her to share his poverty and social immiseration AND has no feeling of affection for their son. I can't criticize her decision.
I guess we are supposed to feel the most sympathy for Reardon, since he gets by far the most page time. But he is so utterly self-absorbed and needy. If I were Amy, a struggling mother trying to run a household and hold body and soul together for three people, I might respond in exactly the way she does. I don't blame her at all, not even for a failure of love. Hey, it happens.
Ok, it is ridiculous that they have a servant. And yes, they should have moved already, to cheaper rooms.
Reardon has no feeling for his little boy. No, he does have feeling - he resents him.
He wants a fantasy-like existence where an idealized woman (in the person of Amy) supplies him with unending amount of love, of a particular kind. How is this even possible? For anyone?
It is hard to know if the situation Gissing creates is a believable one, or a deeply subjective and ultimately flawed image of his own life experience.
A marriage ends. What a palpably painful chapter – a suffocating experience of gendered “realities”: the consequent decimation of lives created by default to gendered constructs of “weakness” and “strength” is “the parting.”
[Reardon]: “… he choked, struggled for breath, and shed tears.”
[Amy]: “Blows and curses would have overawed her .. she would have felt: ‘Yes, he is a man, and I have put my destiny into his hands.’ His tears moved her to a feeling cruelly exultant; they were a sign of her superiority. It was she who should have wept, and never in her life has she been further from such display of weakness.”
In alignment with her “nature,” Amy proclaims, “You have the opportunity of making one more effort to save us from degradation. You refuse to take the trouble; you prefer to drag me down into a lower rank of life. I can’t and won’t consent to this. The disgrace is yours.”
[Reardon]: “the unemphasised contempt … was more than he could bear … what a paltry weakling he would appear in Amy’s eyes if he took his hat done from the peg and set out to obey her orders.”
“I have chosen my part. I can’t stultify myself to please you.”
I want to curl up into a fetal position and cry, “Stop!” All this “masculine” and “feminine” struggle to be human and find meaning, love, and peace in life, is heartrending. Why do we continue to default to constructs that never cease to exacerbate tensions in shaping of purposeful – and satisfying lives?
I've been meaning to remark this since it's been mentioned a number of times, but why in the world do the Reardons have a servant if they are so down-and-out???
interesting reading this novel with this nonfiction book on decluttering called the gentle art of swedish death-cleaning, about getting rid of your stuff to prepare for your death and saving your children from having to deal with all of your crap. reardon has inadvertently death-cleaned quite nicely!
Edwin and Amy are sadly not a match. They both married the wrong person, however in love they might have been (and may still be). Reardon sees his situation clearly for the first time and makes what is for him a wise decision. "I want a variety of occupation... If you will give me this clerkship, it will relieve me from the necessity of perpetually writing novels." (And what writer doesn't need a day job?) Amy, however, cannot be married to a clerk and can't help her nature (a lucid statement indeed). Part of me wanted him to accept her offer to find the money required for his sojourn and support; I imagine she can be very resourceful, and I'm ready to see her take action. But what she isn't hearing is that Reardon isn't up to the work. He needs something to take the pressure off. He has a plan for the first time in months, but it is an untenable plan for her. The bitterness of their exchange and parting is painful, but they were never on the same page about the practicalities of their life.
Which makes their choice of one another even more unfortunate. They ignored economics when they fell in love, which, as Jasper pointed out, is deadly. Amy had a false idea of Reardon's potential, but Reardon knew even then he was taking a big risk in marrying her. They married for love, ill-advisedly. :(
Yes! I could not find the words to capture the tension in their relationship - despite the vagaries of love and economic necessities. I appreciate your astute articulation of their fundamental mismatch.
Early on in this novel, I detested Amy, admired Reardon. Things change in a few hundred pages. Gissing is brilliant at mapping out the dilemmas, the absence of actual affection, the absence of a shared sense of family.
Do you think she has her eyes on Jasper? I have been waiting to see if that develops.
I hope so. Jasper has been kept on the sidelines too long as has Marion. Reardon’s troubles are getting tiresome and a rivalry for Amy’s affection with Marion in the mix would liven things up in a welcomed way.
I wonder how much influence Amy's mother has. She's off in the shadows, as is Willie, but I would hope that they are more on the Reardons's mind. No person is an island, after all, even poor Biffen, who the novel says could disappear with no one to mind. The jealousy that Reardon feels toward Biffen is believable, but he seems to be imputing his own lack of power in his own relationships into Biffen's life. If Reardon was in a better place (mentally, financially, socially) he would know that it's impossible to believe that anyone is completely alone. He's in need of maternal comfort (not Homer or Shakespeare) that he's really not getting, and I'm inclined to either blame Amy or her mother. As I learned in a Henry James course, of all places, follow the money trail.
Amy had pretty much made it clear that this is all about appearances both of their living conditions as well as her husband's career. She cannot live with a clerk, nor can she downsize her home (or god forbid take in laundry). This is a gut punch for Reardon who has got to see now that she doesn't (a probably never did) love him, she loved the fantasy of the life she thought she'd have. If he won the lottery she'd come back and be happy and he'd still be miserable knowing the reason she is there is due to the material trappings. Like Bernadette Peters said in The Jerk... "It's not about the money, it's the stuff!"
I have experienced and witnessed major downturns in a family’s financial fortunes. Adjusting to a whole new lifestyle is very hard. But if there’s a commitment, the tough get going. Good for Reardon.
What Henry James novel do you recommend? I’m doing some Audiobooks and would like to listen to one. Not Washington Sq. Too sad.
If you’re up for a challenge, I would go with The Golden Bowl. I don’t know the ending, but I don’t think it’s sad, but a bit claustrophobic --the human relationships described are so intricately woven. I wish I could hear Colm Toibin reading it
I love Colm Toibin so I’ll try it. Listening to my 7th Anthony Trollope. I’ll be up for a change when I finish it. Thanks!!
If you like Toibin and are interested in Henry James try The Master. Its a novel but about the inner life of James. You also get insight into the inspiration for some of his literature.
Thanks!
portrait of a lady for me.
Thanks!
I lob in a vote for What Maisie Knew
Thanks! I’ll be busy.
Wings of the dove. His best.
Thanks!
Yes! Reardon is in need of maternal comfort, what a great way to put it. Nurturing, support, growth.
The events of this chapter exceeded my expectations of the title ("The Parting"). Edwin was leaping off of ledges - first in his spontaneous decision during his conversation with Carter - "A minute more of pause, and he could not have faced the humiliation. His face burned, his tongue was parched."
And with Amy, much more and sustained effort was required to step off the ledge - "... in a man to whom such self-assertion is a matter of conscious effort, tremor of the nerves will always interfere with the line of conduct he has conceived in advance." Edwin hung in there, But Amy "... glared like the animal that defends itself with tooth and claw."
I was dubious of the vacation method of rejuvenating Edwin's writing career, but frankly didn't expect Amy's "I am certainly not the wife of a clerk who is paid so much a week."
Gissing's descriptions of Amy are so vivid! Early on he describes her as: strong neck, splendid muscles from the ear downward, newly finished head which some honest sculptor has wrought with his own hand from the marble block; there was a suggestion of 'planes' and of the chisel. And now with the comparison of a glaring animal. I wonder who Gissing used as a model for this character! You wonder when the book came out did someone sees themself as this character. Yikes!
As painful as this chapter was, it felt like a release. Finally, it all comes out. To me, Amy has been cold and judgmental, but I’m also trying to think of what it would be like for a woman to have so little agency in the 19th century. I was also thinking in this chapter, what about the child? Does he still exist? He has become a non-entity. Can Reardon truly care so little for his own son?
The most chilling, ominous line for me: “It will be long enough yet before I think contemptuously of you. You know that when a light is suddenly extinguished, the image of it still shows before your eyes. But at last comes the darkness.” ‘At last’ comes the darkness. Shudder.
Yes! The best line in the book! If Reardon could just write as well as he speaks, he'd be making money.
A lot of foreshadowing with Reardon .. . And no one really is listening to his desperation. Amy thinks she can tackle it with practicality. That is why they keep missing one another.
"Before falling asleep he heard the two familiar clocks strike eight; this evening they were in unusual accord, and the querulous notes from the workhouse sounded b/w the deeper ones from St. Marleybone...the matter seemed to have a peculiar interest for him, and in dreams he worried himself with a grotesque speculation thence derived."
Interesting that Gissing doesn't show us the worried dream. What might it be? When I first read this line, I thought that he would take comfort in the sonic accord, that they signified he had made the right decision for him and for his health, despite how painful it might be to part with Amy. But that last clause makes me wonder about my interpretation.
One would like to believe that Amy’s insistence that Edwin fully commit to his writing is an expression of confidence in her husband. Reardon, however, by now surely recognizes that it is not an expression of confidence but merely her wish to maintain status and hope for a better income in the future than he can earn by other means. He thus faces the realization that there is no one (including himself) who truly believes in his ability as a writer.
It's funny because I think she does truly believe in his talent but she can't understand why he can't just produce it at will. It is a blind spot in her, not through lack of belief, I don't think.
You may be right. If so, that would open a path to a future reconciliation.
ooh I dunno about that : )
Amy shows extraordinary agency for a woman in 1880s London. The decision to marry or remain married to someone is very subjective and complicated. The legalization of divorce is considered an enlightenment breakthrough. She is married to a man who asks her to share his poverty and social immiseration AND has no feeling of affection for their son. I can't criticize her decision.
I guess we are supposed to feel the most sympathy for Reardon, since he gets by far the most page time. But he is so utterly self-absorbed and needy. If I were Amy, a struggling mother trying to run a household and hold body and soul together for three people, I might respond in exactly the way she does. I don't blame her at all, not even for a failure of love. Hey, it happens.
Ok, it is ridiculous that they have a servant. And yes, they should have moved already, to cheaper rooms.
Reardon has no feeling for his little boy. No, he does have feeling - he resents him.
He wants a fantasy-like existence where an idealized woman (in the person of Amy) supplies him with unending amount of love, of a particular kind. How is this even possible? For anyone?
It is hard to know if the situation Gissing creates is a believable one, or a deeply subjective and ultimately flawed image of his own life experience.
A marriage ends. What a palpably painful chapter – a suffocating experience of gendered “realities”: the consequent decimation of lives created by default to gendered constructs of “weakness” and “strength” is “the parting.”
[Reardon]: “… he choked, struggled for breath, and shed tears.”
[Amy]: “Blows and curses would have overawed her .. she would have felt: ‘Yes, he is a man, and I have put my destiny into his hands.’ His tears moved her to a feeling cruelly exultant; they were a sign of her superiority. It was she who should have wept, and never in her life has she been further from such display of weakness.”
In alignment with her “nature,” Amy proclaims, “You have the opportunity of making one more effort to save us from degradation. You refuse to take the trouble; you prefer to drag me down into a lower rank of life. I can’t and won’t consent to this. The disgrace is yours.”
[Reardon]: “the unemphasised contempt … was more than he could bear … what a paltry weakling he would appear in Amy’s eyes if he took his hat done from the peg and set out to obey her orders.”
“I have chosen my part. I can’t stultify myself to please you.”
I want to curl up into a fetal position and cry, “Stop!” All this “masculine” and “feminine” struggle to be human and find meaning, love, and peace in life, is heartrending. Why do we continue to default to constructs that never cease to exacerbate tensions in shaping of purposeful – and satisfying lives?
Beautifully said
I've been meaning to remark this since it's been mentioned a number of times, but why in the world do the Reardons have a servant if they are so down-and-out???
I was thinking she was paid almost nothing and there are 8 flights of stairs with groceries (and a baby).
interesting reading this novel with this nonfiction book on decluttering called the gentle art of swedish death-cleaning, about getting rid of your stuff to prepare for your death and saving your children from having to deal with all of your crap. reardon has inadvertently death-cleaned quite nicely!
Edwin and Amy are sadly not a match. They both married the wrong person, however in love they might have been (and may still be). Reardon sees his situation clearly for the first time and makes what is for him a wise decision. "I want a variety of occupation... If you will give me this clerkship, it will relieve me from the necessity of perpetually writing novels." (And what writer doesn't need a day job?) Amy, however, cannot be married to a clerk and can't help her nature (a lucid statement indeed). Part of me wanted him to accept her offer to find the money required for his sojourn and support; I imagine she can be very resourceful, and I'm ready to see her take action. But what she isn't hearing is that Reardon isn't up to the work. He needs something to take the pressure off. He has a plan for the first time in months, but it is an untenable plan for her. The bitterness of their exchange and parting is painful, but they were never on the same page about the practicalities of their life.
Or even their values for that matter.
love back then was more economic and about status than it is now, perhaps? imagine not accepting your spouse taking a clerk's job.
Which makes their choice of one another even more unfortunate. They ignored economics when they fell in love, which, as Jasper pointed out, is deadly. Amy had a false idea of Reardon's potential, but Reardon knew even then he was taking a big risk in marrying her. They married for love, ill-advisedly. :(
Yes! I could not find the words to capture the tension in their relationship - despite the vagaries of love and economic necessities. I appreciate your astute articulation of their fundamental mismatch.
Early on in this novel, I detested Amy, admired Reardon. Things change in a few hundred pages. Gissing is brilliant at mapping out the dilemmas, the absence of actual affection, the absence of a shared sense of family.