"Carter had begun to think there might be a foundation for Mrs Yule's hypothesis—that the novelist was not altogether in his sound senses. At first he scouted the idea, but as time went on it seemed to him that Reardon's countenance certainly had a gaunt wildness which suggested disagreeable things."
Today we would sooner accept a possibility that Reordon's associates resist--the young man is suffering from mental illness. Gissen's Reordon may be a horrifying portrait of untreated mental illness.
At the very least: Seasonal affective disorder, depression, anxiety, suicidal tendencies before those terms may have existed. Gissing clearly and sensitively observed them or felt them himself. Both of his wives struggled. For all Reardon’s annoying self pitying, he does seem to be genuinely suffering.
"She [Amy] had gained much in point of manner during the past twelve months; her ten thousand pounds inspired her with the confidence necessary to a perfect demeanour. That slight hardness which was wont to be perceptible in her tone had altogether passed away; she seemed to be cultivating flexibility of voice." Another great example of economic status infuences character. Amy is smart, charming, and caring - when she has money.
Yiyun's comments today reminded me of a conversation I was having with a therapist. I was relaying an anecdote about a writer (who shall remain nameless!) who responded angrily to a question I asked at a reading. "There is a broad range of self-awareness in any profession, including among writers, including among therapists." Begs the question: Can one be a good writer - or a good therapist for that matter - if he or she struggles with lack of awareness?
Cool question. Or instead of good/bad, perhaps it's a continuum. The more self-awareness and understanding of reality one has, the more effective one is at writing (or therapy)?
I don’t know about writers, but many of my friends are therapists. No self-awareness at all. Good friends, though, and hopefully good enough therapists.
"Both had come to this meeting prepared for a renewal of amity, but in these first few moments each was so disagreeably impressed by the look and language of the other that a revulsion of feeling undid all the more hopeful effects of their long severance." Gissing beautifully captures the old adage: There's a fine line between love and hate.
Biffen: “No good ever can come of letter-writing between two people who have misunderstood each other.” Great advice for a generation of texters!
For someone writing a boring novel, Biffen is a sensitive and perceptive friend.
I’m not sure why Reardon feels “more cheerful” at the end of the chapter. I thought he felt relieved because he is not up to the pressure of Amy returning, but then, since he says he wants to hear Biffen’s exhilarating romance (not), I figured he is sarcastic and bitter.
I do wonder what gets lost when people don't learn how to talk in real time, face to face. E-mail limits tone, and gesture, and so much that is human about communication.
There's definitely been a Metamorphosis - Reardon reminds me so much of hapless Gregor Samsa. He is isolated/pretty much friendless, his physical appearance has deteriorated, and he has lost nearly everything ("By Tuesday the cold had firm grip of him."). I've always felt a sort of ambivalence toward Gregor (maybe it's the bug image), but now I'm just full of pathos. I'm reminded of an Anais Nin quote from high school - "Anxiety makes you feel like a drowning person holding onto you might - you want to save them, but you know they'll strangle you by their panic." Reardon's demons are caught up in a fight with his precious Shakespeare and words. I found the dialogue zipping along, but wonder sometimes, do people really speak this way?
“I begin to see how much right there is on the side of those people who would keep women in subjection. You have been allowed to act with independence, and the result is that you have ruined my life and debased your own.”
This is where I lose touch with Reardon, though I’ve been wavering for a while. Like Alfred, he’s looking externally to blame. And not only is he blaming Amy, but he’s sweeping all of his misery into a distorted worldview. It has been excruciating but educational to watch the fall of Reardon.
Educational indeed! Love is a warped battle of power and control, exertion and submission: “It was always in your power to rule me. What pained me worst, and hardened me against you, was that I saw you didn’t care to exert your influence. There was never a time when I could have resisted a word of yours spoken out of your love for me.” As Reardon roars, Amy “prefer[s] to keep silence” or admit to her own faults: her inability to “behave as meekly as some women can.” Rather than a tango, Reardon’s and Amy’s “love language,” feels like a warrior waltz. Not so sure, I wouldn’t simply hang up my dancing shoes.
“I don’t love him. I can’t love him”. Amy can remain cool because this is the truth. Gissing captures the wild desperation of someone trying everything to make someone feel something they just don’t feel. It is like when a relationship breaks up because one has found another. One person is screaming “LOVE ME” while the other has moved on. The fact that she would concede to move back hurt him even more because he knows she doesn’t feel any love for him, just pity. He doesn’t help himself with threats insisting on an answer now or that’s it. He has no leverage because she is truly over him. He needs to face the fact that he lost her.
This is what I love about Gissing: His characters are so multi-faceted, it's hard to land on one interpretation. Sometimes, I agree with you - she doesn't love him and maybe never did. But when I read that quote, it sounded more to me like she was trying to convince herself that she didn't love him, though she does. Maybe we're asking the wrong question. Maybe it isn't "Does Amy love him?" Maybe it's "Is Amy capable of loving anyone?" Or maybe it's "Is Amy *or* Edwin capable of loving anyone?"
I don’t think she never loved him but there is too much damage done to this relationship and as she gets further away he gets more angry and insulting. She seems pretty content right now but maybe it is a facade. The walls are thick between then.
I'm not sure that Amy even feels pity for Reardon. I get the sense she is only observing proprieties as much as she can for the time being. I think she is determined to maintain the impression that the fault is all on his side.
Gissing dispenses odd-angled roiling raindrops throughout the chapter – drip, drip, drip (like ancient water torture) –creating a sobering shadow of reality that made me want to escape into a “new chapter of [Biffen’s] exhilarating romance”:
“refuge from despair” / “passion of self-pity” / “spirit of obstinate resistance” / “revolt against fate” / “self-pity merges in self-scorn” / “humiliated soul” / “intolerant of existence” / “outraged exile” / “furious contempt” / “extraordinary arrogance” / “exasperated wretchedness” / “desire to utter turbid feelings” / “fortified sense of injustice”/ “misery magnifies [him]self”/ “immeasurable toil” / “insurmountable difficulties” / “seedy habiliments” / “self-deception of misery” / “feigned affection”/ “remnant of love”/ “pleasurable contempt.”
“fortified sense of injustice” - this seems to me the devil in their disconnect.
Amy and her supporters presumed that Edwin’s error was not accepting the vacation that would restore his writing ability - that plan was a folly from the start. Clearly, Edwin‘s writing was not going to support them.
Edwin’s sense of injustice sprung from Amy’s refusal to share the depths of poverty that he was able to draw strength from.
It's painful to see Edwin and Amy stuck so firmly in their rationalizations that they can't mine their own depths. I would like to say it's unfamiliar.
It's harder still when employing Biffen's ("... a man of so much natural delicacy...") ability to see through the wounds that have transformed their relationship. "I should have declared it impossible for you to become so rugged."
Gissing will insist that "the ridiculous trifle" of a nice outfit on Reardon would have changed the outcome for the better.
I doubt that the effect of a nice outfit would have done much to improve things once Reardon got going with what he had to say!
In theory Reardon could have said something like, "Amy, my dearest, I see you are looking at me in these shabby clothes and I am now very sorry that I didn't try harder to dress better for you today. I have been feeling a little down lately, and also, I decided to walk the six miles to get here in the wind and rain, which has left me damp and disheveled, and also, I find I am still very interested in trying to punish you for not loving me in the wildly unreasonable way I want you to, and also, I have no feelings whatsoever of love and affection for our child, and also, I have been far too lenient with you and should have been ordering you to follow me down into whatever hellish spiral I felt like falling into, and also .."
Nope, any way I try to make it better it just turns out the same. Gissing leaves no room for other possibilities!
I confess it's hard to maintain affection for Reardon right now, even when I see him within his time, when he says such tings as "I begin to see how much right there is on the side of those people who would keep women in subjection." And to say that to his wife as he tries to get her back.
But I also think of his earlier comments about not wanting to write a more lucrative "sensational plot" and wanting to create "characters that live," give a window into years when he perhaps actually could write with insight and genuine artistic motivation. In this chapter Reardon has reduced his former artistic passion to: "Do you think I am to occupy myself with the affairs of imaginary people?"
Minor notes, perhaps, but I keep noticing the vitality in Gissing's descriptions and details. In a few brief strokes of dialogue, Gissing projects a silhouette of character we'll never see when Reardon describes the secretary abandoning his post at the "home for destitute boys" –the burly, six foot tall, fight-loving gymnast hauling off "somewhere" to be a missionary.
Meanwhile, Biffen–while he and Reardon are both going hungry–works lovingly on a novel about a Grocer (capital G).
I love the language but also the fact that it is not over romanticized. The stubborness on both sides and the impact of money on the characters could be written today. I think we all can see parts of this book in ourselves at different times in our lives. The crazy things we did and felt when young and looking back and say “what was I thinking?”
Agree with Yiyun, I like the part of Reardon that loves literature and is struggling to write something worthwhile. His stubbornness against Amy is so convincing and reminds me of hearing many male voices in public arguing with their spouses / girlfriends, refusing to give an inch.
"Refuge from despair is often found in the passion of self-pity and that spirit of obstinate resistance which it engenders." This seems like much of the problem on both sides, but especially Reardon's. Gissing goes on to say that "In certain natures, the extreme of self-pity is intolerable and leads to self-destruction; but there are less fortunate beings whom the vehemence of their revolt against fate strengthens to endure in suffering." Less fortunate. Wow. To Gissing, suicide is preferable to the state Reardon is entering. "An extraordinary arrogance now and then possessed him; he stood amid his poor surroundings with the sensations of an outraged exile, and laughed aloud in furious contempt of all who censured or pitied him." That's Alfred Yule all over. This state overrides his better nature and Biffin's sage advice; he writes nastily to Amy (only to regret it, yet not retract), and behaves with increasing hostility in their interview. "Perverseness, one of the forms or issues of self-pity, made him strive against his desire..."
Amy is no better at humbling herself. She exacerbates his self-pity by recoiling from his "shabbiness," and affection cannot override her extreme disillusion and disappointment. Which brings out Reardon's worst. I wonder if a decent suit of clothes really would have made the difference, at least temporarily. It doesn't change the fact that these people are ill-suited for each other. Reardon has none of the society ambitions Amy does and never did, and she has no interest in a life of scholarly seclusion. Very difficult to give up what you want in life and recalibrate. I imagine that's the way to peace and contentment for many, but human nature seems opposed to it.
In the meantime, the onslaught of acerbity Amy gets from Reardon wouldn't open the way for anyone to reconcile. When he asks if she thinks he'd treat her brutally, she replies, "Not brutally in the ordinary sense of the word. But with faults of temper which I couldn't bear. I have my own faults. I can't behave as meekly as some women can." That seems accurate on all counts. Nor should she make herself into a Mrs. Alfred Yule.
Also, Reardon has no interest in his son. He seems to regard him as an alien being. He wants nothing to do with him. Perhaps not unusual at the time, as women took on all the nursery cares, but that state of affairs certainly isn't conducive to fatherly affection, which could also mitigate Reardon's misery, if he would cultivate it.
"Carter had begun to think there might be a foundation for Mrs Yule's hypothesis—that the novelist was not altogether in his sound senses. At first he scouted the idea, but as time went on it seemed to him that Reardon's countenance certainly had a gaunt wildness which suggested disagreeable things."
Today we would sooner accept a possibility that Reordon's associates resist--the young man is suffering from mental illness. Gissen's Reordon may be a horrifying portrait of untreated mental illness.
At the very least, the man is suffering from depression and would benefit greatly, in my non-medical opinion, from an anti-depressant :)
At the very least: Seasonal affective disorder, depression, anxiety, suicidal tendencies before those terms may have existed. Gissing clearly and sensitively observed them or felt them himself. Both of his wives struggled. For all Reardon’s annoying self pitying, he does seem to be genuinely suffering.
"She [Amy] had gained much in point of manner during the past twelve months; her ten thousand pounds inspired her with the confidence necessary to a perfect demeanour. That slight hardness which was wont to be perceptible in her tone had altogether passed away; she seemed to be cultivating flexibility of voice." Another great example of economic status infuences character. Amy is smart, charming, and caring - when she has money.
Yiyun's comments today reminded me of a conversation I was having with a therapist. I was relaying an anecdote about a writer (who shall remain nameless!) who responded angrily to a question I asked at a reading. "There is a broad range of self-awareness in any profession, including among writers, including among therapists." Begs the question: Can one be a good writer - or a good therapist for that matter - if he or she struggles with lack of awareness?
Cool question. Or instead of good/bad, perhaps it's a continuum. The more self-awareness and understanding of reality one has, the more effective one is at writing (or therapy)?
I don’t know about writers, but many of my friends are therapists. No self-awareness at all. Good friends, though, and hopefully good enough therapists.
"Both had come to this meeting prepared for a renewal of amity, but in these first few moments each was so disagreeably impressed by the look and language of the other that a revulsion of feeling undid all the more hopeful effects of their long severance." Gissing beautifully captures the old adage: There's a fine line between love and hate.
Biffen: “No good ever can come of letter-writing between two people who have misunderstood each other.” Great advice for a generation of texters!
For someone writing a boring novel, Biffen is a sensitive and perceptive friend.
I’m not sure why Reardon feels “more cheerful” at the end of the chapter. I thought he felt relieved because he is not up to the pressure of Amy returning, but then, since he says he wants to hear Biffen’s exhilarating romance (not), I figured he is sarcastic and bitter.
Haha! Such a great link to texting.
I love Biffen! A brief glimpse of Reardon’s "better" self only becomes visible during Biffen moments. The poignant power of friendship:
“‘I suppose there were faults of temper on both sides, and you saw at last only each other’s weaknesses.’
‘I saw the truth, which had always been disguised from me.’
Biffen persisted in looking doubtful, and in secret Reardon thanked him for it.”
Not sure I would spend my hard-earned American dollars on "Mr. Bailey, Grocer," but I'm persuadable.
biffen and whelpdale are great minor characters. so refreshing when they appear.
I do wonder what gets lost when people don't learn how to talk in real time, face to face. E-mail limits tone, and gesture, and so much that is human about communication.
I think he's just lonely and Biffen is nice company. :-)
Yes! The simply explanation.
There's definitely been a Metamorphosis - Reardon reminds me so much of hapless Gregor Samsa. He is isolated/pretty much friendless, his physical appearance has deteriorated, and he has lost nearly everything ("By Tuesday the cold had firm grip of him."). I've always felt a sort of ambivalence toward Gregor (maybe it's the bug image), but now I'm just full of pathos. I'm reminded of an Anais Nin quote from high school - "Anxiety makes you feel like a drowning person holding onto you might - you want to save them, but you know they'll strangle you by their panic." Reardon's demons are caught up in a fight with his precious Shakespeare and words. I found the dialogue zipping along, but wonder sometimes, do people really speak this way?
I think the gist of their back and forth was realistic, but in Victorian novels people are always more articulate than in real life.
“I begin to see how much right there is on the side of those people who would keep women in subjection. You have been allowed to act with independence, and the result is that you have ruined my life and debased your own.”
This is where I lose touch with Reardon, though I’ve been wavering for a while. Like Alfred, he’s looking externally to blame. And not only is he blaming Amy, but he’s sweeping all of his misery into a distorted worldview. It has been excruciating but educational to watch the fall of Reardon.
Educational indeed! Love is a warped battle of power and control, exertion and submission: “It was always in your power to rule me. What pained me worst, and hardened me against you, was that I saw you didn’t care to exert your influence. There was never a time when I could have resisted a word of yours spoken out of your love for me.” As Reardon roars, Amy “prefer[s] to keep silence” or admit to her own faults: her inability to “behave as meekly as some women can.” Rather than a tango, Reardon’s and Amy’s “love language,” feels like a warrior waltz. Not so sure, I wouldn’t simply hang up my dancing shoes.
“I don’t love him. I can’t love him”. Amy can remain cool because this is the truth. Gissing captures the wild desperation of someone trying everything to make someone feel something they just don’t feel. It is like when a relationship breaks up because one has found another. One person is screaming “LOVE ME” while the other has moved on. The fact that she would concede to move back hurt him even more because he knows she doesn’t feel any love for him, just pity. He doesn’t help himself with threats insisting on an answer now or that’s it. He has no leverage because she is truly over him. He needs to face the fact that he lost her.
This is what I love about Gissing: His characters are so multi-faceted, it's hard to land on one interpretation. Sometimes, I agree with you - she doesn't love him and maybe never did. But when I read that quote, it sounded more to me like she was trying to convince herself that she didn't love him, though she does. Maybe we're asking the wrong question. Maybe it isn't "Does Amy love him?" Maybe it's "Is Amy capable of loving anyone?" Or maybe it's "Is Amy *or* Edwin capable of loving anyone?"
I don’t think she never loved him but there is too much damage done to this relationship and as she gets further away he gets more angry and insulting. She seems pretty content right now but maybe it is a facade. The walls are thick between then.
I'm not sure that Amy even feels pity for Reardon. I get the sense she is only observing proprieties as much as she can for the time being. I think she is determined to maintain the impression that the fault is all on his side.
Gissing dispenses odd-angled roiling raindrops throughout the chapter – drip, drip, drip (like ancient water torture) –creating a sobering shadow of reality that made me want to escape into a “new chapter of [Biffen’s] exhilarating romance”:
“refuge from despair” / “passion of self-pity” / “spirit of obstinate resistance” / “revolt against fate” / “self-pity merges in self-scorn” / “humiliated soul” / “intolerant of existence” / “outraged exile” / “furious contempt” / “extraordinary arrogance” / “exasperated wretchedness” / “desire to utter turbid feelings” / “fortified sense of injustice”/ “misery magnifies [him]self”/ “immeasurable toil” / “insurmountable difficulties” / “seedy habiliments” / “self-deception of misery” / “feigned affection”/ “remnant of love”/ “pleasurable contempt.”
Drip. Drip. Drip. Make it stop!
“fortified sense of injustice” - this seems to me the devil in their disconnect.
Amy and her supporters presumed that Edwin’s error was not accepting the vacation that would restore his writing ability - that plan was a folly from the start. Clearly, Edwin‘s writing was not going to support them.
Edwin’s sense of injustice sprung from Amy’s refusal to share the depths of poverty that he was able to draw strength from.
It's painful to see Edwin and Amy stuck so firmly in their rationalizations that they can't mine their own depths. I would like to say it's unfamiliar.
It's harder still when employing Biffen's ("... a man of so much natural delicacy...") ability to see through the wounds that have transformed their relationship. "I should have declared it impossible for you to become so rugged."
Gissing will insist that "the ridiculous trifle" of a nice outfit on Reardon would have changed the outcome for the better.
I doubt that the effect of a nice outfit would have done much to improve things once Reardon got going with what he had to say!
In theory Reardon could have said something like, "Amy, my dearest, I see you are looking at me in these shabby clothes and I am now very sorry that I didn't try harder to dress better for you today. I have been feeling a little down lately, and also, I decided to walk the six miles to get here in the wind and rain, which has left me damp and disheveled, and also, I find I am still very interested in trying to punish you for not loving me in the wildly unreasonable way I want you to, and also, I have no feelings whatsoever of love and affection for our child, and also, I have been far too lenient with you and should have been ordering you to follow me down into whatever hellish spiral I felt like falling into, and also .."
Nope, any way I try to make it better it just turns out the same. Gissing leaves no room for other possibilities!
I confess it's hard to maintain affection for Reardon right now, even when I see him within his time, when he says such tings as "I begin to see how much right there is on the side of those people who would keep women in subjection." And to say that to his wife as he tries to get her back.
But I also think of his earlier comments about not wanting to write a more lucrative "sensational plot" and wanting to create "characters that live," give a window into years when he perhaps actually could write with insight and genuine artistic motivation. In this chapter Reardon has reduced his former artistic passion to: "Do you think I am to occupy myself with the affairs of imaginary people?"
Minor notes, perhaps, but I keep noticing the vitality in Gissing's descriptions and details. In a few brief strokes of dialogue, Gissing projects a silhouette of character we'll never see when Reardon describes the secretary abandoning his post at the "home for destitute boys" –the burly, six foot tall, fight-loving gymnast hauling off "somewhere" to be a missionary.
Meanwhile, Biffen–while he and Reardon are both going hungry–works lovingly on a novel about a Grocer (capital G).
i've come to love gissing's language, always forget (repress) how wonderful British writers are.
I love the language but also the fact that it is not over romanticized. The stubborness on both sides and the impact of money on the characters could be written today. I think we all can see parts of this book in ourselves at different times in our lives. The crazy things we did and felt when young and looking back and say “what was I thinking?”
Agree with Yiyun, I like the part of Reardon that loves literature and is struggling to write something worthwhile. His stubbornness against Amy is so convincing and reminds me of hearing many male voices in public arguing with their spouses / girlfriends, refusing to give an inch.
"Refuge from despair is often found in the passion of self-pity and that spirit of obstinate resistance which it engenders." This seems like much of the problem on both sides, but especially Reardon's. Gissing goes on to say that "In certain natures, the extreme of self-pity is intolerable and leads to self-destruction; but there are less fortunate beings whom the vehemence of their revolt against fate strengthens to endure in suffering." Less fortunate. Wow. To Gissing, suicide is preferable to the state Reardon is entering. "An extraordinary arrogance now and then possessed him; he stood amid his poor surroundings with the sensations of an outraged exile, and laughed aloud in furious contempt of all who censured or pitied him." That's Alfred Yule all over. This state overrides his better nature and Biffin's sage advice; he writes nastily to Amy (only to regret it, yet not retract), and behaves with increasing hostility in their interview. "Perverseness, one of the forms or issues of self-pity, made him strive against his desire..."
Amy is no better at humbling herself. She exacerbates his self-pity by recoiling from his "shabbiness," and affection cannot override her extreme disillusion and disappointment. Which brings out Reardon's worst. I wonder if a decent suit of clothes really would have made the difference, at least temporarily. It doesn't change the fact that these people are ill-suited for each other. Reardon has none of the society ambitions Amy does and never did, and she has no interest in a life of scholarly seclusion. Very difficult to give up what you want in life and recalibrate. I imagine that's the way to peace and contentment for many, but human nature seems opposed to it.
In the meantime, the onslaught of acerbity Amy gets from Reardon wouldn't open the way for anyone to reconcile. When he asks if she thinks he'd treat her brutally, she replies, "Not brutally in the ordinary sense of the word. But with faults of temper which I couldn't bear. I have my own faults. I can't behave as meekly as some women can." That seems accurate on all counts. Nor should she make herself into a Mrs. Alfred Yule.
Also, Reardon has no interest in his son. He seems to regard him as an alien being. He wants nothing to do with him. Perhaps not unusual at the time, as women took on all the nursery cares, but that state of affairs certainly isn't conducive to fatherly affection, which could also mitigate Reardon's misery, if he would cultivate it.