Great chapter title indeed. During my Peace Corps days in Sri Lanka I went to a “convalescent home” for Typhoid (which my grandmother had when she was young) and I surely felt unstuck in time.
I felt Reardon would have been offed in the first reel of a modern movie with all his whining. But I admit to having a naive hope for a miracle recovery if he was coming around to some more positive attitude. And for those of us readers who are giving ourselves or someone too much harsh criticism, we can do better than a deathbed TB revelation. Did everyone else know he had to die, even with that chapter title?
“I am come to nurse you, dear husband. I have only you now”. Is anyone else reminded of Natasha and Prince Andre in W&P? All misunderstands put to rest, leaving them both at peace. Crises and illness do bring people together, stripping away egos, pride, mistakes. Gissing’s parting scene was believable to me thanks to the build up and descriptions of their relationship.
Yes, I was reminded of Natasha and Andre in W+P. Also, Reardon's dream of the boat out to sea in Greece reminded me in a way of Andre's dream of the door.
Edwin died released from his sources of pain and redeemed by Amy's expressions of love, which may be all he ever wanted. "It doesn't matter what happens; she is mine again."
I was surprised and somewhat validated by Gissing's assessment of Amy's inner workings, "hers was the kind of penitence which is forced by sheer stress of circumstances on a nature which resents any form of humiliation; she could not abandon herself to unreserved grief for what she had done or admitted, and the sense of this defect made a great part of her affliction." Amy was treated to Edwin's semi conscious recollections of struggling with the novel and her role in that, and "... his delirious utterances constrained her to... confuse her mourning with self-reproaching and with fears."
I thought he was going to make it - until he used a line that seemed more in place in a modern form of acquiescence - '"I shall never go with you to Greece," he said distinctly.'
While I appreciated Edwin's sense of release and redemption found in Amy's expression of love, and hoped for a miraculous recovery for Edwin, I questioned the essential nature of any love that remains dependent on such self-focused "need." Not to speak ill of those who have "passed" but to me, Edwin remain self-centered to the end (despite bits of recognition that he should be otherwise): He had "forgotten that" Willie was ill ... In the future the child should be more to him; though never what the mother was, his own love, won again and for ever." Is this a healthy love? To me, Edwin's proclamation reflects only a slight variation of his previous dependency - one who remains dependent on another for a sense of self worth -- at the expense of another (an innocent child!).
And, as if this is not a sufficient window into his soul, Edwin ruminates: "Poor little Willie had been the cause of the first coldness between him and Amy; her love for him had given place to a mother's love for the child. Now it would be as in the first days of their marriage; they would again be all in all to each other." Really?! Am I the only one disturbed by Edwin's embrace of his oneness with Amy, now that his child has died? I am not claiming that he wished his child to die, nor that he is not upset by his death, but still ... ?
Yes, I was re-reading those parts too and they have a chilling and depressing effect for sure. At least Reardon is consistent, but in a way that feels more true to a rhetorical effect than an actual emotional one.
Yes...I noticed this and by today’s parenting standards, it does disturb, but the reaction was consistent with Reardon’s character and somehow more interesting than if he’d suddenly had a watershed moment regarding his role as a father. Gissing seems far more interested in exploring Reardon’s continued feeling of failure as a writer. The tragic lens of the novel seems more focused on how people are trapped in financial and artistic drudgery.
I actually like that Gissing didn’t white wash Reardon in his death. His personality was very needy and he probably did resent the attention his wife gave their son and had little affection for the kid. If Reardon did a complete turn I would discount Gissing as just writing to keep the audience happy. Gissing gives us complex characters, warts and all. Its refreshingly real. Not cheery but real.
Yes! No one wants writing "to keep the audience happy!" Warts and all is laudable! My emotional response is wrapped up in [my] decidedly 21st century parental sensibilities.
“Amy, do you know that Biffen and I are going to Greece?” . “You must take me with you, Edwin.” Again, I’m reminded how thoughts of art, culture, beauty in ancient times appear to be such a salve for hard times among struggling artists in bleak England at the time.
The most poignant farewell; such a sad, yet viscerally authentic evocation of true friendship: ‘I shall never go with you to Greece,’ [Reardon] said distinctly.
It seems fitting and sad that Reardon’s last words in the book come from the great literature he loved.
Prospero in The Tempest: “Our revels now are ended. These our actors, / As I foretold you, were all spirits and / Are melted into air, into thin air; / And - like the baseless fabric of this vision - / The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, / The solemn temples, the great globe itself, / Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, / And like this insubstantial pageant faded, / Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff / As dreams are made on, and our little life / Is rounded with a sleep.”
Perhaps he had some modicum of peace by “the divine sea” but I found the fever-dream re-suffering of all his suffering in trying “to write something worthy of himself” to be heart-breaking. In Dicken’s A Christmas Carol, Marley says, “I wear the chain I forged in life. I made it link by link, and yard by yard...” Here, there is no ghost, no afterlife. Reardon strangles himself with his own thoughts over and over while he is still alive.
My "empathy train" for Biffen continues. The visible, visceral display of emotion had me pulling out a hankie: "After holding the shrunken hand for a moment he was convulsed with an agonizing sob, and had to turn away.” His philosophical sense of injustice, battling with his realistic nature: "Not even the sound of the breakers when he had wandered as far as possible from human contact could help him to think with resignation of the injustice which triumphs so flagrantly in the destinies of men.” And, the heart-rending contrast between the "brilliant" day in which the "sun shone" and the "sea was flecked with foam - changing green and azure" and Biffen walking, left alone with his thoughts: “It seemed to him that he had never before known such solitude, even through all the years of his lonely and sad existence.” Tear.
Reardon has been dying for what feels like half the book; now he is actively dying in a more advanced way. He becomes "practical" by going to Brighton, a place he has never seen but still detests as he considers it "a mere portion of London transferred to the sea-shore." Not even the sea itself is enough to make him less prejudiced to it.
A man of high principles, indeed.
Isn't "practical" Jasper's word? Part of the irony seems to be that Gissing is using it for Reardon, whom he likes to contrast with Jasper favorably.
I can't help but think how other writers would have used this time of travel of Reardon's to his sick child and estranged wife in a way differently than Gissing does here. Perhaps Reardon could have had thoughts of his past with Amy and regretted his coldness to his child. But he is so ill already that all he can do is suffer physically. His physical stamina is stressed again here - that he even makes the journey at all, tries to run on legs that won't let him, coughs so much he can hardly breathe. Reardon is a romantic and a stoic.
"Why did you send for me, Amy?" he asks. He still doesn't get it.
"He was near the divine sea." "Not all the folly and baseness that paraded along this strip of the shore could change the sea's eternal melody." Reardon is getting his little bit of the Mediterranean here.
He feels he can't possibly die; he's too young, and he wants to be happy.
Then he actually does dream of Greece, a condensed allegory of his life and impending death.
(I'm sorry, but when you dream of boats, passing Ithaca, and rocky promontories, there's probably no turning around ..)
I had a bad feeling that Gissing would let Willie die but I was still shocked that he did. His wretched realism wins again.
My dad also had TB in the 1950's. Perhaps Yiyun and I both owe our existences to the discovery of new drugs and drug combinations.
Interesting notes on TB from you and Yiyun. Illness and infection are never far away for many. I also was struck by Reardon's thought when he knew he'd receive care funded by Amy: "To the rich, illness has none of the worst horrors only understood by the poor." He realized too late. Even in his dying, Reardon bears the stamp of his determination to choose poverty and art.
I was really moved by this chapter. Despite his decision to leave writing, on his deathbed, Reardon he is haunted by this decision: "I must do my regular quantity every day, no matter what it is.” Not writing seems to be how he betrayed himself most, not the fame, but the doing of the work. He and Biffen both cared about quality and trying to live up to one's ideals, even if they didn't achieve it.
Biffen also shows how he lives through the love of Reardon and Amy when he is "overcome with a sense of fatality; grief and dread held him motionless." He's put his entire life on hold. And for what?
And of course, Gissing had to set this scene by the sea. Biffen and Reardon both dream of an idealized ancient Greece, the Battle of Actium, and the famous line from Shakespeare's Tempest, a play about an artist/magician giving up his art.
I didn't expect Reardon to die, but I'm glad Gissing brought us here so evocatively. So much about writing and art and failure, I almost (heartlessly?) forget about Amy and poor Willie.
A beautiful evocation of the chapter; I almost felt myself at sea, along with Biffen and Reardon, dreaming of a world in which art is the essence of life/living/love.
I agree that Biffen seems to live vicariously through Reardon in his marriage to Amy. He is always chiding Reardon for not doing everything in his power to retain such a wife. It does make me wonder how Biffen would find marriage himself. What would a wife think about his hours spent on Mr. Bailey, Grocer? Maybe he'd be willing to abandon it. I could see him spending his days supporting his family and carving out a little time of an evening or a weekend for his own pursuits. It is suggested that he remains a bachelor because he cannot afford to marry--at least not someone he would be drawn to. He definitely seems to find Amy appealing.
I feel at a loss for words after this chapter. These deaths are so abrupt (even though we know Reardon has been unwell for some time). Tragic--and yet not unusual. That's Reardon's story at an end. And Reardon and Amy's. And Willie's. No more wondering what Reardon will do for the rest of his life. I'm glad Reardon died in the midst of tenderness, instead of alone in his garret. But poor Amy. What a shattering sequence of events.
I agree that it’s a shattering series of events for Amy. I find, however, that Willie was such a shadowy symbol that his death doesn’t seem real from an emotional point of view. Reardon’s death, by contrast, was quite touching.
Sad as Willie's death is for us, I don't think Reardon's attitude is unusual for the time. Children were women's business, and also many died, so modern closeness might be too heart wrenching for parents. Children were considered little adults, to be put to work to help the family survive in lower income families. The practicality mentioned refers to a final breakthrough of the pride and pigheadedness to be able to love his beloved again, and die peacefully and in love.
has this novel become a page-turner or what? I did not expect two deaths in a chapter! I expect publications of novels and shilling-counting but not this.
Yes! Gissing surprises me time and again. I didn’t expect the fire and then to have Biffen survive it, I expected Reardon but not the baby to die and definitely did not expect Jasper to suddenly be so magnanimous (the jury is still out on this).
Interesting....thank you for the exploration of “practical.” Sheds light...
I know, one of my first thoughts with Biffen's book was - gosh, it's really too bad he didn't save a copy on Dropbox.
Great chapter title indeed. During my Peace Corps days in Sri Lanka I went to a “convalescent home” for Typhoid (which my grandmother had when she was young) and I surely felt unstuck in time.
I felt Reardon would have been offed in the first reel of a modern movie with all his whining. But I admit to having a naive hope for a miracle recovery if he was coming around to some more positive attitude. And for those of us readers who are giving ourselves or someone too much harsh criticism, we can do better than a deathbed TB revelation. Did everyone else know he had to die, even with that chapter title?
Yup. My first thought.
Me, too.
Me three
“I am come to nurse you, dear husband. I have only you now”. Is anyone else reminded of Natasha and Prince Andre in W&P? All misunderstands put to rest, leaving them both at peace. Crises and illness do bring people together, stripping away egos, pride, mistakes. Gissing’s parting scene was believable to me thanks to the build up and descriptions of their relationship.
Yes! It did feel like something out of another book, and showed another side to Gissing as well.
Yes, I was reminded of Natasha and Andre in W+P. Also, Reardon's dream of the boat out to sea in Greece reminded me in a way of Andre's dream of the door.
Edwin died released from his sources of pain and redeemed by Amy's expressions of love, which may be all he ever wanted. "It doesn't matter what happens; she is mine again."
I was surprised and somewhat validated by Gissing's assessment of Amy's inner workings, "hers was the kind of penitence which is forced by sheer stress of circumstances on a nature which resents any form of humiliation; she could not abandon herself to unreserved grief for what she had done or admitted, and the sense of this defect made a great part of her affliction." Amy was treated to Edwin's semi conscious recollections of struggling with the novel and her role in that, and "... his delirious utterances constrained her to... confuse her mourning with self-reproaching and with fears."
I thought he was going to make it - until he used a line that seemed more in place in a modern form of acquiescence - '"I shall never go with you to Greece," he said distinctly.'
While I appreciated Edwin's sense of release and redemption found in Amy's expression of love, and hoped for a miraculous recovery for Edwin, I questioned the essential nature of any love that remains dependent on such self-focused "need." Not to speak ill of those who have "passed" but to me, Edwin remain self-centered to the end (despite bits of recognition that he should be otherwise): He had "forgotten that" Willie was ill ... In the future the child should be more to him; though never what the mother was, his own love, won again and for ever." Is this a healthy love? To me, Edwin's proclamation reflects only a slight variation of his previous dependency - one who remains dependent on another for a sense of self worth -- at the expense of another (an innocent child!).
And, as if this is not a sufficient window into his soul, Edwin ruminates: "Poor little Willie had been the cause of the first coldness between him and Amy; her love for him had given place to a mother's love for the child. Now it would be as in the first days of their marriage; they would again be all in all to each other." Really?! Am I the only one disturbed by Edwin's embrace of his oneness with Amy, now that his child has died? I am not claiming that he wished his child to die, nor that he is not upset by his death, but still ... ?
Yes, I was re-reading those parts too and they have a chilling and depressing effect for sure. At least Reardon is consistent, but in a way that feels more true to a rhetorical effect than an actual emotional one.
Yes...I noticed this and by today’s parenting standards, it does disturb, but the reaction was consistent with Reardon’s character and somehow more interesting than if he’d suddenly had a watershed moment regarding his role as a father. Gissing seems far more interested in exploring Reardon’s continued feeling of failure as a writer. The tragic lens of the novel seems more focused on how people are trapped in financial and artistic drudgery.
Agree!
I actually like that Gissing didn’t white wash Reardon in his death. His personality was very needy and he probably did resent the attention his wife gave their son and had little affection for the kid. If Reardon did a complete turn I would discount Gissing as just writing to keep the audience happy. Gissing gives us complex characters, warts and all. Its refreshingly real. Not cheery but real.
Yes! No one wants writing "to keep the audience happy!" Warts and all is laudable! My emotional response is wrapped up in [my] decidedly 21st century parental sensibilities.
“Amy, do you know that Biffen and I are going to Greece?” . “You must take me with you, Edwin.” Again, I’m reminded how thoughts of art, culture, beauty in ancient times appear to be such a salve for hard times among struggling artists in bleak England at the time.
The most poignant farewell; such a sad, yet viscerally authentic evocation of true friendship: ‘I shall never go with you to Greece,’ [Reardon] said distinctly.
It seems fitting and sad that Reardon’s last words in the book come from the great literature he loved.
Prospero in The Tempest: “Our revels now are ended. These our actors, / As I foretold you, were all spirits and / Are melted into air, into thin air; / And - like the baseless fabric of this vision - / The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, / The solemn temples, the great globe itself, / Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, / And like this insubstantial pageant faded, / Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff / As dreams are made on, and our little life / Is rounded with a sleep.”
Perhaps he had some modicum of peace by “the divine sea” but I found the fever-dream re-suffering of all his suffering in trying “to write something worthy of himself” to be heart-breaking. In Dicken’s A Christmas Carol, Marley says, “I wear the chain I forged in life. I made it link by link, and yard by yard...” Here, there is no ghost, no afterlife. Reardon strangles himself with his own thoughts over and over while he is still alive.
Great connections..
The image of Reardon strangling himself is apt.
My "empathy train" for Biffen continues. The visible, visceral display of emotion had me pulling out a hankie: "After holding the shrunken hand for a moment he was convulsed with an agonizing sob, and had to turn away.” His philosophical sense of injustice, battling with his realistic nature: "Not even the sound of the breakers when he had wandered as far as possible from human contact could help him to think with resignation of the injustice which triumphs so flagrantly in the destinies of men.” And, the heart-rending contrast between the "brilliant" day in which the "sun shone" and the "sea was flecked with foam - changing green and azure" and Biffen walking, left alone with his thoughts: “It seemed to him that he had never before known such solitude, even through all the years of his lonely and sad existence.” Tear.
Reardon has been dying for what feels like half the book; now he is actively dying in a more advanced way. He becomes "practical" by going to Brighton, a place he has never seen but still detests as he considers it "a mere portion of London transferred to the sea-shore." Not even the sea itself is enough to make him less prejudiced to it.
A man of high principles, indeed.
Isn't "practical" Jasper's word? Part of the irony seems to be that Gissing is using it for Reardon, whom he likes to contrast with Jasper favorably.
I can't help but think how other writers would have used this time of travel of Reardon's to his sick child and estranged wife in a way differently than Gissing does here. Perhaps Reardon could have had thoughts of his past with Amy and regretted his coldness to his child. But he is so ill already that all he can do is suffer physically. His physical stamina is stressed again here - that he even makes the journey at all, tries to run on legs that won't let him, coughs so much he can hardly breathe. Reardon is a romantic and a stoic.
"Why did you send for me, Amy?" he asks. He still doesn't get it.
"He was near the divine sea." "Not all the folly and baseness that paraded along this strip of the shore could change the sea's eternal melody." Reardon is getting his little bit of the Mediterranean here.
He feels he can't possibly die; he's too young, and he wants to be happy.
Then he actually does dream of Greece, a condensed allegory of his life and impending death.
(I'm sorry, but when you dream of boats, passing Ithaca, and rocky promontories, there's probably no turning around ..)
I had a bad feeling that Gissing would let Willie die but I was still shocked that he did. His wretched realism wins again.
My dad also had TB in the 1950's. Perhaps Yiyun and I both owe our existences to the discovery of new drugs and drug combinations.
Interesting notes on TB from you and Yiyun. Illness and infection are never far away for many. I also was struck by Reardon's thought when he knew he'd receive care funded by Amy: "To the rich, illness has none of the worst horrors only understood by the poor." He realized too late. Even in his dying, Reardon bears the stamp of his determination to choose poverty and art.
I was really moved by this chapter. Despite his decision to leave writing, on his deathbed, Reardon he is haunted by this decision: "I must do my regular quantity every day, no matter what it is.” Not writing seems to be how he betrayed himself most, not the fame, but the doing of the work. He and Biffen both cared about quality and trying to live up to one's ideals, even if they didn't achieve it.
Biffen also shows how he lives through the love of Reardon and Amy when he is "overcome with a sense of fatality; grief and dread held him motionless." He's put his entire life on hold. And for what?
And of course, Gissing had to set this scene by the sea. Biffen and Reardon both dream of an idealized ancient Greece, the Battle of Actium, and the famous line from Shakespeare's Tempest, a play about an artist/magician giving up his art.
I didn't expect Reardon to die, but I'm glad Gissing brought us here so evocatively. So much about writing and art and failure, I almost (heartlessly?) forget about Amy and poor Willie.
A beautiful evocation of the chapter; I almost felt myself at sea, along with Biffen and Reardon, dreaming of a world in which art is the essence of life/living/love.
I agree that Biffen seems to live vicariously through Reardon in his marriage to Amy. He is always chiding Reardon for not doing everything in his power to retain such a wife. It does make me wonder how Biffen would find marriage himself. What would a wife think about his hours spent on Mr. Bailey, Grocer? Maybe he'd be willing to abandon it. I could see him spending his days supporting his family and carving out a little time of an evening or a weekend for his own pursuits. It is suggested that he remains a bachelor because he cannot afford to marry--at least not someone he would be drawn to. He definitely seems to find Amy appealing.
Wouldn’t that be funny if Amy and Biffen ended up together instead of Amy and Jasper, as many of us are expecting. Biffen more of a Pierre type (W&P).
George Giffen does a good death bed scene, but not in Tolstoy's league. He had to do both off stage.
I feel at a loss for words after this chapter. These deaths are so abrupt (even though we know Reardon has been unwell for some time). Tragic--and yet not unusual. That's Reardon's story at an end. And Reardon and Amy's. And Willie's. No more wondering what Reardon will do for the rest of his life. I'm glad Reardon died in the midst of tenderness, instead of alone in his garret. But poor Amy. What a shattering sequence of events.
I agree that it’s a shattering series of events for Amy. I find, however, that Willie was such a shadowy symbol that his death doesn’t seem real from an emotional point of view. Reardon’s death, by contrast, was quite touching.
Yes, I found it all less emotional than just stark. As death is.
Sad as Willie's death is for us, I don't think Reardon's attitude is unusual for the time. Children were women's business, and also many died, so modern closeness might be too heart wrenching for parents. Children were considered little adults, to be put to work to help the family survive in lower income families. The practicality mentioned refers to a final breakthrough of the pride and pigheadedness to be able to love his beloved again, and die peacefully and in love.
Good point!
has this novel become a page-turner or what? I did not expect two deaths in a chapter! I expect publications of novels and shilling-counting but not this.
Yes! Gissing surprises me time and again. I didn’t expect the fire and then to have Biffen survive it, I expected Reardon but not the baby to die and definitely did not expect Jasper to suddenly be so magnanimous (the jury is still out on this).