“. . . losing money, he had lost everything.”“Foolish idealist! Love is one of the first things to be frightened away by poverty.” As Yiyun said, the couple here had lost more than money—they no longer had hope. (But I’m still remembering last chapter’s discussion of laundry. Hope would be hard to sustain wearing dirty underwear 😢)
Someone said in earlier posts that it isn't just the money, and it seems to be true. There are old married couples that love to tell stories about how broke they were when they were first together. Stories of scrapping together money from multiple jobs, etc. If the meaning in Amy and Reardon's relationship is about social standing and material goods then it's no surprise they couldn't even make it 2 years. All marriages have tough years. They need to want to be together enough to get through this time. Their love should be the meaning.
Victor Frankel said there is going to be suffering, it is how we respond to it that gets us through it. “If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an eradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death, human life cannot be complete.”
"Man's Search for Meaning" is in my "to read" pile next to my reading chair. You have inspired me to move it to the top of the pile and begin reading. Thank you!
"His own fault. A man has no business to fail; least of all can he expect others to have time to look back upon him or pity him if he sink under the stress of conflict. Those behind will trample over his body; they can't help it; they themselves are borne onwards by resistless pressure."
Well said, though self-pitying, but this depends on the arena one chooses to compete in. Indeed, Amy is not insisting only that he remain a writer: "If you seriously abandon all further hope from literature, I think it is your duty to make every effort to obtain a position suitable to a man of your education.—AMY REARDON.' I am with Yuyun Li: "One rather likes to see him being confronted by Amy’s unsentimental wisdom." Every culture has its imperatives. At times, it may be that the able bodied fight in a war.
At this time and place it's that Edwin earn enough to support himself and his dependents. He did the right thing by committing to send what support he could afford to Amy snd his son. Amy did the right thing to accept it.
Reardon's self-talk seems to have him spiraling down into further depression. I wonder if he had an over critical parent that keep playing in his head? He seems rather realistic about his writing at this point and realizes he needs to make money for Amy & his son, but he is in between a rock and a hard place if Amy insists he make his money as a writer.
What’s so alluring about the literary profession?-In the previous chapter, the "hyena" Mrs. Yule implies there was some social cache in being a writer then as there is now: "A literary man? Well, it was one mode of distinction. Happily, a novelist; novelists now and then had considerable social success.”
Until the "literary man” fails, of course. Then his downfall seems worse than others.
Interesting also that in this chapter Biffen is the only person Reardon can imagine going to. Is it because of Biffen's ideals or Biffen's poverty that he feels he will not look down on him? I'm not sure.
I think that’s exactly it. The desire goes beyond having something to say that others might be interested in. It also goes beyond the belief that you can craft the words in a skillful way. It is the hope that your beautifully crafted words will be worth preserving.
I wondered at the pairing of Reardon's feeling "utterly alone in the world" with "*unless* it were Biffen, what mortal would give him kindly welcome under any roof?" Biffen has been the one individual with whom Reardon seems to find true joy - a shared intellectual inquisitiveness - and the one with whom he is most authentically himself; having a Biffen in the world should be a salve, a sanctuary, not an "unless."
I wonder why Gissing frames Reardon's relation to Biffen in this way? Is it another nod to the complexity of embracing our essential values, whilst grappling with / influenced by by societal norms of "worth"? Reardon certainly seems to be grappling: "How must they be speaking of him ... A novelist who couldn't write novels; a husband who couldn't support a wife and child; a literate who made eager application for illiterate work at paltry wages ..."
And yet, despite his proclamation of utter aloneness, it seems as if Reardon is re-defining "downfall," challenging it as an apt descriptor of his changing circumstances. I may be a naive idealist, but I do not see Reardon as without the "hope of rising." Perhaps, it is a matter of how "rising" or "redemption" is defined. To me, Reardon seems to be re-visioning the conditions of a potentially meaningful life: “He lit as small a fire as possible, put on his kettle, and sat down to meditate … How familiar it all was to him! And not unpleasant, for it brought back the days when he had worked to good purpose. It was like a restoration of youth.”
Perhaps it is a stretch - and/or my hopeful heart, but I found potential redemption for Reardon in his lucid re-memory, and embrace of "obscurity" -- as if he might ultimately find himself once removed from the constant gaze of others' rigid expectations of a "literary man": “He had been a pretender. It was not natural to him to live in the manner of people who enjoy an assured income; he belonged to the class of casual wage-earners. Back to obscurity! / “Let the man of letters be forgotten; he was seeking for remunerative employment, just as if he had never written a line … [H]e was back once more in the days of no reputation, a harmless clerk, a decent wage-earner.”
The exclamation mark screams here; a proclamation of pragmatic embrace found in removing oneself from the suffocating pressures of “liv[ing] only in the opinions of other people”? And "decent" hints, perhaps, at a reclaiming of self-worth? Is Reardon giving himself permission to discover and forge a self-defined path forward in life?
I seem to be at odds with others' impressions with respect to Reardon. Can't wait to see what unfolds.
I think a combination of hitting rock bottom and relief at being back in a garret may result in Reardon finding himself again and maybe even being able to write again. Particularly if he can let go of the self-pity.
first, a favorite phrase from yesterday's reading "But whilst she [Mrs. Edmund Yule] could be a positive HYENA to strangers... perhaps, that is why some are drawn to writing, the fact that you can call someone (albeit a fiction character) a hyena.
today, I think reardon has hijacked this novel. I need some dora/maud.
He does seem to get an inordinate amount of attention and is perpetually dismal--also rather passive, though he does try, ineffectually (and maybe half-heartedly?), to make things happen. He isn't really suited to be an actor in the world. He would like to read the classics and pen his thoughts about them and try to sell these musings. And then one day he found himself out in public, decently dressed, and met a girl he liked...
Certainly, one response to hunger, coldness, tiredness is despair. And then despair begins to feed on itself, so that it seemingly begins to explain everything. I have this pet theory that only a few select people are able to feel despair. Most people find humor or something like it. (But again, I could just be romanticizing sadness.)
"It was not natural for him to live in the manner of people who enjoyed an assured income; he belonged to the class of casual wage-earners." This line begs the question: Are our financial circumstances more within our control than we believe them to be, as much a part of our identity as any other belief system? And that question then begs the next question: Is Reardon down on his luck or has he chosen this path, consciously or subconsciously, because it is more syntonic to who he believes himself to be?
"The money would have been welcome, but on that account he might have known it would not come." This gave me a magical-thinking notion that Reardon's habit of expecting the worst is somehow bringing about just that outcome. There are practical reasons for this too; he is experiencing the opposite of momentum, and it is very hard to generate the latter in such a state. I do wonder how much control he/we have. I don't think Reardon would find it unnatural to have an assured income. When his father died, he quit the estate agent, took his inheritance, and liquidated everything else to move to London and set himself up as a scholarly writer. And when he sold his third book, he went to the continent and returned in good spirits. He wouldn't spend money the way some would, but he would happily abandon the grind and pursue the things he finds fulfilling.
Edwin is alone and we are taken through his stages of relief, shame, doubt, rationalization, and resolve.
His confrontation with John Yule was an exercise in restraint, and I think Edwin was right in his assessment that accurately conveying his experiences to Amy's mother and brother"...would be the equivalent to addressing them in alien tongues." Not to mention that any of his reasons would fall on deaf ears.
Edwin settles quickly into his new existence, reflecting "that for two years and a half he had been a pretender."
I was impressed by Edwin response to Amy during their epistolary exchange - "in withdrawing from me your affection you have lost all right to offer me counsel," referring to his effort to offer to provide what seem to be more, even, than he could afford.
John Yule's colloquy with Reardon is as galling as I anticipated. Reardon may warrant some straight talk from someone, but it certainly isn't this spoiled brat. As it is, the exchange completes his humiliation and galvanizes him into extreme downsizing, essentially returning him to the "painful economy" of former year. Getting there is terrible, as he attends to the last "hateful details in this process of ruin" (including getting cheated on the sale of his furniture). And when his one submission still at large is rejected, "he even laughed at the artistic completeness of the situation." He may rise again, but apparently it is necessary to hit rock bottom first.
Like Amy, he welcomes a return to his pre-marital state. Neither was unhappy when unmarried, just, perhaps, anticipatory of things to come. That anticipation may be the missing ingredient now, in their mutually disillusioned state.
Reardon, unlike a lot of writers, did not really aspire to it. He was essentially a scholar, trying to get articles published, and wanted a ticket to the reading room. The novelist who supplied it suggested he try his hand at that. Makes me think of the pressure, if you are a writer, to pen a novel. A novel can theoretically make money, unlike poems or short stories (in the current market; stories were once more lucrative). But that doesn't mean becoming a novelist is even remotely practical. Reardon got bad advice but genuinely devoted himself to it for years, producing several books. Gissing summarizes all that effort--not much else you can do since it's hard to dramatize--but it is no small feat.
John Yule as a "spoiled brat" is too perfect! If only someone would reference him as such, to his face. Perhaps that would shatter his "calm insolence."
I was reminded in today's chapter of John Yule's priceless comment in yesterday's: "Reardon must get a decent berth. Somebody or other must pitch him into the kind of place that suits men who can do nothing in particular." I laughed out loud. And the worldview this implies! Not only are there "decent" (i.e. well paying) jobs, perfectly acceptable and respectable, for people who can do nothing, but it's somebody else's responsibility to get you one. John Yule really is something. Amy is less naive than he is; she at least acknowledges it could be years before such an "opportunity" arises.
As I read this book I am continually reminded of the British class system and its peculiar rigidities. (I know something of it on a personal level as my parents are British and the class system most definitely played a significant role in both of their lives and in a strange echoing way even in mine though I did not grow up entirely in Britain ..) Gissing's insistent note that only men who marry women with money can gain opportunities is a twist - isn't it usually the other way around? And it's Amy who is the stronger one emotionally here. They clearly never should have married, and all the talk about lost love is somewhat beside the point, I feel.
I think it is a much more punishing and limiting system than many of us can imagine if we have not had some experience of it. I feel Gissing kicking at it and hitting it with his fists and spitting at it with lordly derision and not really putting much of a dent in it for all that.
Where Dickens would have enlarged the class differences to his advantage, here Gissing seems to be looking at them through a very narrow viewing glass, turning the same sharp corners over and over.
For women moving through and above and below class boundaries, Wharton - another writer I keep thinking of as I read this book. As well as Knut Hamsun's Hunger. For the poverty in this book though scraping does not take us quite into the stomach and bowels, but stays mostly in the head and clothes. When Biffen proudly eats his bread and dripping though, I feel quite ill and sorry.
Dripping is congealed meat fat.
What is so alluring about being a writer? Perhaps it is some idea of personal freedom. Meanwhile Gissing shows us the opposite.
I wonder if Gissing's "hitting it [class system] with his fists and spitting it with lordly derision" and "turning the same sharp corners over and over" is intended to convey the static - and claustrophobic - reality of the life within a rigid system of hierarchy, in which privilege is lauded, and one's access to it becomes an all-consuming framework for quotidian choices and ultimately one's sense of worth. A viscerally sardonic social critique, as it were? Personal freedom seems entirely linked to "privilege" and an illusory sense of a "literary man's" potential to claim it.
Love your capture of poverty: "not tak[ing] us quite into the stomach and bowels, but stay[ing] mostly in the head and clothes." Spot on!
Beautifully said. Where privilege is lauded for some, hope is erased for others. You either have "it" or you don't, through birth. Access to money is not the same thing as privilege in the sense of class. But you can obtain the trappings of privilege - a nice house, nicer food, more servants. I am not sure what to think of Gissing's renditions of "lower class" accents and physiognomies. He seems to be classing people himself based on education and perceived inherent ability, another kind of oppression. Or maybe it's all some kind of rhetorical demonstration, I don't know!
i need to reread hamsun's HUNGER. thank you for the reminder. i like how marxist, in the base structure / superstructure determinist sense, this novel is.
“. . . losing money, he had lost everything.”“Foolish idealist! Love is one of the first things to be frightened away by poverty.” As Yiyun said, the couple here had lost more than money—they no longer had hope. (But I’m still remembering last chapter’s discussion of laundry. Hope would be hard to sustain wearing dirty underwear 😢)
Someone said in earlier posts that it isn't just the money, and it seems to be true. There are old married couples that love to tell stories about how broke they were when they were first together. Stories of scrapping together money from multiple jobs, etc. If the meaning in Amy and Reardon's relationship is about social standing and material goods then it's no surprise they couldn't even make it 2 years. All marriages have tough years. They need to want to be together enough to get through this time. Their love should be the meaning.
Victor Frankel said there is going to be suffering, it is how we respond to it that gets us through it. “If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an eradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death, human life cannot be complete.”
I just finished reading Man's Search for Meaning - so moving and so profound. I hadn't made the connection to the Reardons but I see it now.
"Man's Search for Meaning" is in my "to read" pile next to my reading chair. You have inspired me to move it to the top of the pile and begin reading. Thank you!
"His own fault. A man has no business to fail; least of all can he expect others to have time to look back upon him or pity him if he sink under the stress of conflict. Those behind will trample over his body; they can't help it; they themselves are borne onwards by resistless pressure."
Well said, though self-pitying, but this depends on the arena one chooses to compete in. Indeed, Amy is not insisting only that he remain a writer: "If you seriously abandon all further hope from literature, I think it is your duty to make every effort to obtain a position suitable to a man of your education.—AMY REARDON.' I am with Yuyun Li: "One rather likes to see him being confronted by Amy’s unsentimental wisdom." Every culture has its imperatives. At times, it may be that the able bodied fight in a war.
At this time and place it's that Edwin earn enough to support himself and his dependents. He did the right thing by committing to send what support he could afford to Amy snd his son. Amy did the right thing to accept it.
Reardon's self-talk seems to have him spiraling down into further depression. I wonder if he had an over critical parent that keep playing in his head? He seems rather realistic about his writing at this point and realizes he needs to make money for Amy & his son, but he is in between a rock and a hard place if Amy insists he make his money as a writer.
What’s so alluring about the literary profession?-In the previous chapter, the "hyena" Mrs. Yule implies there was some social cache in being a writer then as there is now: "A literary man? Well, it was one mode of distinction. Happily, a novelist; novelists now and then had considerable social success.”
Until the "literary man” fails, of course. Then his downfall seems worse than others.
Interesting also that in this chapter Biffen is the only person Reardon can imagine going to. Is it because of Biffen's ideals or Biffen's poverty that he feels he will not look down on him? I'm not sure.
Maybe it's our wish for immortality.
I think that’s exactly it. The desire goes beyond having something to say that others might be interested in. It also goes beyond the belief that you can craft the words in a skillful way. It is the hope that your beautifully crafted words will be worth preserving.
I wondered at the pairing of Reardon's feeling "utterly alone in the world" with "*unless* it were Biffen, what mortal would give him kindly welcome under any roof?" Biffen has been the one individual with whom Reardon seems to find true joy - a shared intellectual inquisitiveness - and the one with whom he is most authentically himself; having a Biffen in the world should be a salve, a sanctuary, not an "unless."
I wonder why Gissing frames Reardon's relation to Biffen in this way? Is it another nod to the complexity of embracing our essential values, whilst grappling with / influenced by by societal norms of "worth"? Reardon certainly seems to be grappling: "How must they be speaking of him ... A novelist who couldn't write novels; a husband who couldn't support a wife and child; a literate who made eager application for illiterate work at paltry wages ..."
And yet, despite his proclamation of utter aloneness, it seems as if Reardon is re-defining "downfall," challenging it as an apt descriptor of his changing circumstances. I may be a naive idealist, but I do not see Reardon as without the "hope of rising." Perhaps, it is a matter of how "rising" or "redemption" is defined. To me, Reardon seems to be re-visioning the conditions of a potentially meaningful life: “He lit as small a fire as possible, put on his kettle, and sat down to meditate … How familiar it all was to him! And not unpleasant, for it brought back the days when he had worked to good purpose. It was like a restoration of youth.”
Perhaps it is a stretch - and/or my hopeful heart, but I found potential redemption for Reardon in his lucid re-memory, and embrace of "obscurity" -- as if he might ultimately find himself once removed from the constant gaze of others' rigid expectations of a "literary man": “He had been a pretender. It was not natural to him to live in the manner of people who enjoy an assured income; he belonged to the class of casual wage-earners. Back to obscurity! / “Let the man of letters be forgotten; he was seeking for remunerative employment, just as if he had never written a line … [H]e was back once more in the days of no reputation, a harmless clerk, a decent wage-earner.”
The exclamation mark screams here; a proclamation of pragmatic embrace found in removing oneself from the suffocating pressures of “liv[ing] only in the opinions of other people”? And "decent" hints, perhaps, at a reclaiming of self-worth? Is Reardon giving himself permission to discover and forge a self-defined path forward in life?
I seem to be at odds with others' impressions with respect to Reardon. Can't wait to see what unfolds.
I think a combination of hitting rock bottom and relief at being back in a garret may result in Reardon finding himself again and maybe even being able to write again. Particularly if he can let go of the self-pity.
Plus, giving monetary support to Amy and the (invisible) baby restores some of his dignity.
first, a favorite phrase from yesterday's reading "But whilst she [Mrs. Edmund Yule] could be a positive HYENA to strangers... perhaps, that is why some are drawn to writing, the fact that you can call someone (albeit a fiction character) a hyena.
today, I think reardon has hijacked this novel. I need some dora/maud.
He does seem to get an inordinate amount of attention and is perpetually dismal--also rather passive, though he does try, ineffectually (and maybe half-heartedly?), to make things happen. He isn't really suited to be an actor in the world. He would like to read the classics and pen his thoughts about them and try to sell these musings. And then one day he found himself out in public, decently dressed, and met a girl he liked...
I agree re: your hyena comment.
who will move on first, him or amy? feels like she really isn't a mess the way he is, partly because she has to hold it together for their child.
Amy, yes--that's my wager. Curious to see what she does next.
Certainly, one response to hunger, coldness, tiredness is despair. And then despair begins to feed on itself, so that it seemingly begins to explain everything. I have this pet theory that only a few select people are able to feel despair. Most people find humor or something like it. (But again, I could just be romanticizing sadness.)
"It was not natural for him to live in the manner of people who enjoyed an assured income; he belonged to the class of casual wage-earners." This line begs the question: Are our financial circumstances more within our control than we believe them to be, as much a part of our identity as any other belief system? And that question then begs the next question: Is Reardon down on his luck or has he chosen this path, consciously or subconsciously, because it is more syntonic to who he believes himself to be?
Beautifully stated. I had similar questions.
"The money would have been welcome, but on that account he might have known it would not come." This gave me a magical-thinking notion that Reardon's habit of expecting the worst is somehow bringing about just that outcome. There are practical reasons for this too; he is experiencing the opposite of momentum, and it is very hard to generate the latter in such a state. I do wonder how much control he/we have. I don't think Reardon would find it unnatural to have an assured income. When his father died, he quit the estate agent, took his inheritance, and liquidated everything else to move to London and set himself up as a scholarly writer. And when he sold his third book, he went to the continent and returned in good spirits. He wouldn't spend money the way some would, but he would happily abandon the grind and pursue the things he finds fulfilling.
Very good points!
Edwin is alone and we are taken through his stages of relief, shame, doubt, rationalization, and resolve.
His confrontation with John Yule was an exercise in restraint, and I think Edwin was right in his assessment that accurately conveying his experiences to Amy's mother and brother"...would be the equivalent to addressing them in alien tongues." Not to mention that any of his reasons would fall on deaf ears.
Edwin settles quickly into his new existence, reflecting "that for two years and a half he had been a pretender."
I was impressed by Edwin response to Amy during their epistolary exchange - "in withdrawing from me your affection you have lost all right to offer me counsel," referring to his effort to offer to provide what seem to be more, even, than he could afford.
John Yule's colloquy with Reardon is as galling as I anticipated. Reardon may warrant some straight talk from someone, but it certainly isn't this spoiled brat. As it is, the exchange completes his humiliation and galvanizes him into extreme downsizing, essentially returning him to the "painful economy" of former year. Getting there is terrible, as he attends to the last "hateful details in this process of ruin" (including getting cheated on the sale of his furniture). And when his one submission still at large is rejected, "he even laughed at the artistic completeness of the situation." He may rise again, but apparently it is necessary to hit rock bottom first.
Like Amy, he welcomes a return to his pre-marital state. Neither was unhappy when unmarried, just, perhaps, anticipatory of things to come. That anticipation may be the missing ingredient now, in their mutually disillusioned state.
Reardon, unlike a lot of writers, did not really aspire to it. He was essentially a scholar, trying to get articles published, and wanted a ticket to the reading room. The novelist who supplied it suggested he try his hand at that. Makes me think of the pressure, if you are a writer, to pen a novel. A novel can theoretically make money, unlike poems or short stories (in the current market; stories were once more lucrative). But that doesn't mean becoming a novelist is even remotely practical. Reardon got bad advice but genuinely devoted himself to it for years, producing several books. Gissing summarizes all that effort--not much else you can do since it's hard to dramatize--but it is no small feat.
John Yule as a "spoiled brat" is too perfect! If only someone would reference him as such, to his face. Perhaps that would shatter his "calm insolence."
I was reminded in today's chapter of John Yule's priceless comment in yesterday's: "Reardon must get a decent berth. Somebody or other must pitch him into the kind of place that suits men who can do nothing in particular." I laughed out loud. And the worldview this implies! Not only are there "decent" (i.e. well paying) jobs, perfectly acceptable and respectable, for people who can do nothing, but it's somebody else's responsibility to get you one. John Yule really is something. Amy is less naive than he is; she at least acknowledges it could be years before such an "opportunity" arises.
As I read this book I am continually reminded of the British class system and its peculiar rigidities. (I know something of it on a personal level as my parents are British and the class system most definitely played a significant role in both of their lives and in a strange echoing way even in mine though I did not grow up entirely in Britain ..) Gissing's insistent note that only men who marry women with money can gain opportunities is a twist - isn't it usually the other way around? And it's Amy who is the stronger one emotionally here. They clearly never should have married, and all the talk about lost love is somewhat beside the point, I feel.
I think it is a much more punishing and limiting system than many of us can imagine if we have not had some experience of it. I feel Gissing kicking at it and hitting it with his fists and spitting at it with lordly derision and not really putting much of a dent in it for all that.
Where Dickens would have enlarged the class differences to his advantage, here Gissing seems to be looking at them through a very narrow viewing glass, turning the same sharp corners over and over.
For women moving through and above and below class boundaries, Wharton - another writer I keep thinking of as I read this book. As well as Knut Hamsun's Hunger. For the poverty in this book though scraping does not take us quite into the stomach and bowels, but stays mostly in the head and clothes. When Biffen proudly eats his bread and dripping though, I feel quite ill and sorry.
Dripping is congealed meat fat.
What is so alluring about being a writer? Perhaps it is some idea of personal freedom. Meanwhile Gissing shows us the opposite.
I wonder if Gissing's "hitting it [class system] with his fists and spitting it with lordly derision" and "turning the same sharp corners over and over" is intended to convey the static - and claustrophobic - reality of the life within a rigid system of hierarchy, in which privilege is lauded, and one's access to it becomes an all-consuming framework for quotidian choices and ultimately one's sense of worth. A viscerally sardonic social critique, as it were? Personal freedom seems entirely linked to "privilege" and an illusory sense of a "literary man's" potential to claim it.
Love your capture of poverty: "not tak[ing] us quite into the stomach and bowels, but stay[ing] mostly in the head and clothes." Spot on!
Beautifully said. Where privilege is lauded for some, hope is erased for others. You either have "it" or you don't, through birth. Access to money is not the same thing as privilege in the sense of class. But you can obtain the trappings of privilege - a nice house, nicer food, more servants. I am not sure what to think of Gissing's renditions of "lower class" accents and physiognomies. He seems to be classing people himself based on education and perceived inherent ability, another kind of oppression. Or maybe it's all some kind of rhetorical demonstration, I don't know!
i need to reread hamsun's HUNGER. thank you for the reminder. i like how marxist, in the base structure / superstructure determinist sense, this novel is.
I need to read Marx, thank you for the reminder : )