"His desire was to impress Amy with the bitter intensity of his sufferings; pathos and loving words seemed to have lost their power upon her, but perhaps if he yielded to that other form of passion she would be shaken out of her coldness. The stress of injured love is always tempted to speech which seems its contradiction. Reardon had the strangest mixture of pain and pleasure in flinging out these first words of wrath that he had ever addressed to Amy; they consoled him under the humiliating sense of his weakness, and yet he watched with dread his wife's countenance as she listened to him. He hoped to cause her pain equal to his own, for then it would be in his power at once to throw off this disguise and soothe her with every softest word his heart could suggest."
Amy's response to this was predictable. However many countless times men have yielded to the impulse to do this has, it ever but alienated her?
Predictable indeed! Loved (laud!) Amy's pithy response: "You must think of me what you like. I don't care to defend myself." Followed by her succinct calling Reardon to account: "I have never neglected my duty. Is the duty all on my side?"
Despite my initial annoyance (dare I say, disgust) at Reardon’s “sternly reproachful” words spewed at Amy: “[Y]ou haven’t done your duty … You have given me no help; besides the burden of cheerless work I have had to bear that of your growing coldness,” I was still moved by his internalized struggle and visceral need to find - and embrace - an authentic self, to claim worth, as an individual human being: “But I am not ‘only an ordinary man,’ Amy! If I never write another line, that won’t undo what I have done … you know what I am. Do you only love the author in me? Don’t you think of me apart from all that I may do or not do? If I had to earn my living as a clerk, would that make me a clerk in soul?”
Of course, there remains the disconcerting “normalcy” of class hierarchy implicit within Reardon’s plea for recognition of his individual human value. Does Gissing intend social criticism? Or, is this another reflection of human imperfection and/or vulnerability (likely found within us all): the desire to be recognized for some authentic inner essence, rather than being defined by our work or public-facing selves?
Interesting to look at the lines both of you quoted from the POV of gender. I think any and every human, regardless of gender, have yielded to the desire to couch their love or need for love in anger. But I do think that, even today, men more than women gain much of their identity through their work. Or perhaps I should say that society pressures men more than women to gain much of their identity through their work. Gissing captures this so perfectly.
'Can I think of a single subject in all the sphere of my experience without the consciousness that I see it through the medium of poverty? I have no enjoyment which isn't tainted by that thought, and I can suffer no pain which it doesn't increase. The curse of poverty is to the modern world just what that of slavery was to the ancient. Rich and destitute stand to each other as free man and bond. You remember the line of Homer I have often quoted about the demoralising effect of enslavement; poverty degrades in the same way.'
Edwin is powerful and eloquent on the subject of poverty and wealth. He should write an essay about that. But here it probably doesn't help his cause with Amy.
Amy's solution of a temporary separation so he can write in the country in solitude seems like sensible last resort, but may have ulterior motive. She may have reached the end of her rope.
Perhaps, this line is obvious, but (for me) it captures the essence of "the curse of poverty" and Reardon's lived experience: “The difference between the man with money and the man without is simply this: the one thinks, ‘How shall I use my life?’ and the other, ‘How shall I keep myself alive?’” Ouch!
I marked that line as well. That philosophical voice coming in, consistently, again. I imagine Gissing poring over these questions himself (poverty vs. quality and art) as he wrote.
This is such a painful chapter. I hadn't thought of Edwin as chronically suicidal until here:
"Thoughts of self-destruction were again haunting him, as they had done during the black months of last year."
And perhaps susceptible to weather. This novel does a good job of shattering the Romantic illusion that suffering is "good" for an artist. Reardon's pain when he remembers the exhilaration he used to experience as a younger writer also ring true. He remembers not only how easily the ideas came to him, but where he was when he first had those ideas. Beautiful details.
His description (and romanticization) of his former, solitary, creative days is particularly poignant. He has a powerful and understandable nostalgia for them, in which any "miserable struggle" loses out to the memory of "hours of contented work."
I also might filch his phrase for insomnia, inspired by Shakespeare: "....as a rule, he was conscious all through the night of “a kind of fighting” between physical weariness and wakeful toil of the mind."
Ahhh, yes ... persistent "wakeful toil" throughout the quiet, dark hours of night, both a blessing (productive pleasure, at times) and a curse (woeful weariness, at others).
"It often happened that some wholly imagined obstacle in the story...kept him under a sense of effort throughout the dark hours..." This, too, gets at the experience of sleep that isn't sleep, more like a waking, working doze.
Impressive, the effects of Edwin misery - "... often he spoke with that hesitation and choice of words which may be noticed in persons whom defeat has made self-distrustful."
Edwin had waited too long to express his concerns/complaints/needs to Amy effectively - thus "... he had the choice between two ways of uttering his emotion - the tenderly appealing and the sternly reproachful: he took the latter course because it was less natural to him than the former."
After all of my Amy-bashing, I must praise her for doing the hard stuff in response to Edwin's onslaught. The sentences still swirl around poverty, but she validates her love, is finally willing to give up their lodgings, and she proposes a plan that intends to save their marriage.
Ch. 4:”Eight flights up ...no one could contest the respectability of the abode.” Ch 15: Amy: “I hate poverty so ...I have told you that before, Edwin.” And the readers were told in our introduction to the Reardons. Amy loves Edwin, but the woman Edwin married is not going to live in a garret.
The entire line that Yiyun excerpted is stunning: "It seemed to him that the greatest happiness attainable would be to creep into some dark, warm corner out of the sight and memory of men, and lie there torpid, with a blessed half-consciousness that death was slowly overcoming him." I love that final clause as well - the "blessed half-consciousness" so accurately captures the despair in suicidal ideation.
I was away this weekend, so I missed the Team Amy / Team Edwin debate. I find it's impossible to choose sides in such a tale of desperation. I feel for both of them.
What's in silence? Reardon senses a "change" from Amy, he suspects her of talking about him behind his back, and this change registers as a loss to him. At times, the narrator voice is restrained, almost tiptoeing around the issue, and at others, it's more blatant. Their poverty, for instance, is felt sharper by their awareness that there are those who don't have. It's hard to fault either Amy or Reardon, so the blame goes to the arbitrary whims of a reading public — if it exists in any comprehensible form, as the root of society's ills. I found myself doubting Amy's role as a cheerleader for literature (or of her husband, a self-professed literary citizen, who is having a bout of woe is me), and am finally glad that they speak of it, at all.
The mention of libraries at the end of the reading, that libraries maintain the life of books, seems sketchy but important to note. There's a saying in the library world - that people say they love libraries, but they don't love to fund libraries. Those who have other priorities.
There’s a certain nobility to parts of the conversation between Amy and Reardon. For example “If you bid me to go on with the struggle, I shall do so”. It is it truly noble or simply Quixotic?
I also find myself wondering whether, despite the preoccupation with the effects of their poverty, financial security would be truly enough for either Amy or Edwin.
Much has been written eg: “Why Money Can’t Buy Happiness: Feeling Respected Matters More”. Leslie Carr. The Atlantic, June 27, 2012
Wonderful. I've also always been puzzled about a saying - if money can solve a problem, then it isn't really a problem. But then, there's another saying - money isn't the problem, not having any is. Money is quicksand; it just comes and goes. There must be something more fundamental on which human relation is based. And yet, as my friends might argue, is there anything more foundational than an economy?
All true. To get mathematical about it, money is necessary (to a point) but not sufficient for a happy life. Regrettably, Amy and Edwin have a long way to go in their quest.
I think you make a great point that it isn't just about the money. Choosing writing as a career means you are taking your thoughts and putting them out for public approval. Even if it is fiction, they are still the writer's thoughts. When Amy looked at the shelf and said there are his works, he thinks yes, I was good which translates to me to be "respect" like you mentioned. Amy, as well as the public, have rejected Reardon. He's lost the respect of more than just 1 person! How a writer separates that rejection between his "product" and his "self" is beyond me. It takes some kind of courage to even try.
“The difference, he went on, between the man with money the man without is simply this: the one thinks, ‘How shall I use my life?’ and the other, ‘How shall I keep myself alive?’”
What Reardon says about poverty seems true, but I’m not convinced poverty is the root of his morbid state of mind. He has a fantasy while walking with Amy of how easy his life would be were he rich. While money is certainly a huge obstacle, it doesn’t seem like his marriage or interior thoughts have healthy patterns and looming poverty exposes them. Sometimes I understand Reardon completely and feel so much for all that he’s going through. Sometimes I wonder why he can’t seem to get out of his own way. He is so certain about his own habits and how the future will turn out. I wonder if this certainty is what pulls him down into “the abyss.”
This community reading exercise is brand new to me, as is Substack, which I don’t grok yet. I got an email from Substack today (perhaps we all got the same one) which provided some insight as it described Substack as a new paradigm in connecting the writer to the reader. Of course, I immediately thought of Jasper’s reaction to Edwin’s adherence to the ‘three-volume system’ - "a triple headed monster, sucking the blood of English novelists."
Do you only love the author in me? Don’t you think of me apart from all that I may do or not do? If I had to earn my living as a clerk, would that make me a clerk in soul?’
A nice parallel to Jasper’s line “There is the man apart from his necessities” from Chp. 14. Gisslng suggest that in a capitalist society, the answer to Readon's question is that man apart from his economic capacity. And yes, to answer Readon directly, authors are really "clerks" - whether that's is his soul or not. Judging people in the abstract (e.g. as an artist or a moral or immoral person) apart from societal/economic circumstances is incomplete. I recognize this is a highly materialistic view of humanity.
So many despairing lines in this chapter. Yiyun quotes perhaps the most chilling, but it is by no means alone. "This one last effort he would make, just to complete the undeniableness of his failure..."
"They lived in dread of the pettiest casual expense..."
"The world has no pity on a man who can't do or produce something it thinks worth money."
It is excruciating to watch the demise of this marriage; this chapter offers some hope, though I fear Gissing is signaling to us that it's false. Even when behaving cruelly, Edwin makes me incredibly sad, perhaps because Gissing gives us the full scope of his suffering. He is on the brink of despair, and emotionally he is like a child. Amy is trapped in a bad situation with him, but she seems better equipped for life. I think she'll survive if things don't work out, though she'll be profoundly disillusioned and possibly embittered; Reardon likely won't.
What stands out for me in this chapter, other than the misery itself, is the detailed way in which Amy and Edwin discuss it and their feelings, thoughts, and relationship. So modern! Is there another Victorian novel like this?
"His desire was to impress Amy with the bitter intensity of his sufferings; pathos and loving words seemed to have lost their power upon her, but perhaps if he yielded to that other form of passion she would be shaken out of her coldness. The stress of injured love is always tempted to speech which seems its contradiction. Reardon had the strangest mixture of pain and pleasure in flinging out these first words of wrath that he had ever addressed to Amy; they consoled him under the humiliating sense of his weakness, and yet he watched with dread his wife's countenance as she listened to him. He hoped to cause her pain equal to his own, for then it would be in his power at once to throw off this disguise and soothe her with every softest word his heart could suggest."
Amy's response to this was predictable. However many countless times men have yielded to the impulse to do this has, it ever but alienated her?
Predictable indeed! Loved (laud!) Amy's pithy response: "You must think of me what you like. I don't care to defend myself." Followed by her succinct calling Reardon to account: "I have never neglected my duty. Is the duty all on my side?"
Despite my initial annoyance (dare I say, disgust) at Reardon’s “sternly reproachful” words spewed at Amy: “[Y]ou haven’t done your duty … You have given me no help; besides the burden of cheerless work I have had to bear that of your growing coldness,” I was still moved by his internalized struggle and visceral need to find - and embrace - an authentic self, to claim worth, as an individual human being: “But I am not ‘only an ordinary man,’ Amy! If I never write another line, that won’t undo what I have done … you know what I am. Do you only love the author in me? Don’t you think of me apart from all that I may do or not do? If I had to earn my living as a clerk, would that make me a clerk in soul?”
Of course, there remains the disconcerting “normalcy” of class hierarchy implicit within Reardon’s plea for recognition of his individual human value. Does Gissing intend social criticism? Or, is this another reflection of human imperfection and/or vulnerability (likely found within us all): the desire to be recognized for some authentic inner essence, rather than being defined by our work or public-facing selves?
Interesting to look at the lines both of you quoted from the POV of gender. I think any and every human, regardless of gender, have yielded to the desire to couch their love or need for love in anger. But I do think that, even today, men more than women gain much of their identity through their work. Or perhaps I should say that society pressures men more than women to gain much of their identity through their work. Gissing captures this so perfectly.
'Can I think of a single subject in all the sphere of my experience without the consciousness that I see it through the medium of poverty? I have no enjoyment which isn't tainted by that thought, and I can suffer no pain which it doesn't increase. The curse of poverty is to the modern world just what that of slavery was to the ancient. Rich and destitute stand to each other as free man and bond. You remember the line of Homer I have often quoted about the demoralising effect of enslavement; poverty degrades in the same way.'
Edwin is powerful and eloquent on the subject of poverty and wealth. He should write an essay about that. But here it probably doesn't help his cause with Amy.
Amy's solution of a temporary separation so he can write in the country in solitude seems like sensible last resort, but may have ulterior motive. She may have reached the end of her rope.
Perhaps, this line is obvious, but (for me) it captures the essence of "the curse of poverty" and Reardon's lived experience: “The difference between the man with money and the man without is simply this: the one thinks, ‘How shall I use my life?’ and the other, ‘How shall I keep myself alive?’” Ouch!
I marked that line as well. That philosophical voice coming in, consistently, again. I imagine Gissing poring over these questions himself (poverty vs. quality and art) as he wrote.
His writing and his references were felt and eloquent. He should write an essay on the topic.
Yes, "felt and eloquent"!
This brief exchange succinctly captures the distinctive difference between Amy’s and Reardon’s worldview:
‘The works of Edwin Reardon,’ she said, with a smile.
‘The work, at all events – rather a different thing, unfortunately.’
Poignantly perfect.
So many great lines in this chapter amid so much despair....
This is such a painful chapter. I hadn't thought of Edwin as chronically suicidal until here:
"Thoughts of self-destruction were again haunting him, as they had done during the black months of last year."
And perhaps susceptible to weather. This novel does a good job of shattering the Romantic illusion that suffering is "good" for an artist. Reardon's pain when he remembers the exhilaration he used to experience as a younger writer also ring true. He remembers not only how easily the ideas came to him, but where he was when he first had those ideas. Beautiful details.
His description (and romanticization) of his former, solitary, creative days is particularly poignant. He has a powerful and understandable nostalgia for them, in which any "miserable struggle" loses out to the memory of "hours of contented work."
I also might filch his phrase for insomnia, inspired by Shakespeare: "....as a rule, he was conscious all through the night of “a kind of fighting” between physical weariness and wakeful toil of the mind."
Ahhh, yes ... persistent "wakeful toil" throughout the quiet, dark hours of night, both a blessing (productive pleasure, at times) and a curse (woeful weariness, at others).
"It often happened that some wholly imagined obstacle in the story...kept him under a sense of effort throughout the dark hours..." This, too, gets at the experience of sleep that isn't sleep, more like a waking, working doze.
Impressive, the effects of Edwin misery - "... often he spoke with that hesitation and choice of words which may be noticed in persons whom defeat has made self-distrustful."
Edwin had waited too long to express his concerns/complaints/needs to Amy effectively - thus "... he had the choice between two ways of uttering his emotion - the tenderly appealing and the sternly reproachful: he took the latter course because it was less natural to him than the former."
After all of my Amy-bashing, I must praise her for doing the hard stuff in response to Edwin's onslaught. The sentences still swirl around poverty, but she validates her love, is finally willing to give up their lodgings, and she proposes a plan that intends to save their marriage.
Agreed. She keeps returning and engaging when he is just resentful and withdrawn, able only to lash out and then brood.
Ch. 4:”Eight flights up ...no one could contest the respectability of the abode.” Ch 15: Amy: “I hate poverty so ...I have told you that before, Edwin.” And the readers were told in our introduction to the Reardons. Amy loves Edwin, but the woman Edwin married is not going to live in a garret.
The entire line that Yiyun excerpted is stunning: "It seemed to him that the greatest happiness attainable would be to creep into some dark, warm corner out of the sight and memory of men, and lie there torpid, with a blessed half-consciousness that death was slowly overcoming him." I love that final clause as well - the "blessed half-consciousness" so accurately captures the despair in suicidal ideation.
I was away this weekend, so I missed the Team Amy / Team Edwin debate. I find it's impossible to choose sides in such a tale of desperation. I feel for both of them.
I can't help but hear Keats in that quotation: "Darkling I listen; and, for many a time / I have been half in love with easeful Death."
What's in silence? Reardon senses a "change" from Amy, he suspects her of talking about him behind his back, and this change registers as a loss to him. At times, the narrator voice is restrained, almost tiptoeing around the issue, and at others, it's more blatant. Their poverty, for instance, is felt sharper by their awareness that there are those who don't have. It's hard to fault either Amy or Reardon, so the blame goes to the arbitrary whims of a reading public — if it exists in any comprehensible form, as the root of society's ills. I found myself doubting Amy's role as a cheerleader for literature (or of her husband, a self-professed literary citizen, who is having a bout of woe is me), and am finally glad that they speak of it, at all.
The mention of libraries at the end of the reading, that libraries maintain the life of books, seems sketchy but important to note. There's a saying in the library world - that people say they love libraries, but they don't love to fund libraries. Those who have other priorities.
There’s a certain nobility to parts of the conversation between Amy and Reardon. For example “If you bid me to go on with the struggle, I shall do so”. It is it truly noble or simply Quixotic?
I also find myself wondering whether, despite the preoccupation with the effects of their poverty, financial security would be truly enough for either Amy or Edwin.
Much has been written eg: “Why Money Can’t Buy Happiness: Feeling Respected Matters More”. Leslie Carr. The Atlantic, June 27, 2012
Wonderful. I've also always been puzzled about a saying - if money can solve a problem, then it isn't really a problem. But then, there's another saying - money isn't the problem, not having any is. Money is quicksand; it just comes and goes. There must be something more fundamental on which human relation is based. And yet, as my friends might argue, is there anything more foundational than an economy?
All true. To get mathematical about it, money is necessary (to a point) but not sufficient for a happy life. Regrettably, Amy and Edwin have a long way to go in their quest.
I think you make a great point that it isn't just about the money. Choosing writing as a career means you are taking your thoughts and putting them out for public approval. Even if it is fiction, they are still the writer's thoughts. When Amy looked at the shelf and said there are his works, he thinks yes, I was good which translates to me to be "respect" like you mentioned. Amy, as well as the public, have rejected Reardon. He's lost the respect of more than just 1 person! How a writer separates that rejection between his "product" and his "self" is beyond me. It takes some kind of courage to even try.
“The difference, he went on, between the man with money the man without is simply this: the one thinks, ‘How shall I use my life?’ and the other, ‘How shall I keep myself alive?’”
What Reardon says about poverty seems true, but I’m not convinced poverty is the root of his morbid state of mind. He has a fantasy while walking with Amy of how easy his life would be were he rich. While money is certainly a huge obstacle, it doesn’t seem like his marriage or interior thoughts have healthy patterns and looming poverty exposes them. Sometimes I understand Reardon completely and feel so much for all that he’s going through. Sometimes I wonder why he can’t seem to get out of his own way. He is so certain about his own habits and how the future will turn out. I wonder if this certainty is what pulls him down into “the abyss.”
This community reading exercise is brand new to me, as is Substack, which I don’t grok yet. I got an email from Substack today (perhaps we all got the same one) which provided some insight as it described Substack as a new paradigm in connecting the writer to the reader. Of course, I immediately thought of Jasper’s reaction to Edwin’s adherence to the ‘three-volume system’ - "a triple headed monster, sucking the blood of English novelists."
Stranger in a strange land by Robert Heinlein used “grok”. Haven’t heard it for ages. Great word.
Do you only love the author in me? Don’t you think of me apart from all that I may do or not do? If I had to earn my living as a clerk, would that make me a clerk in soul?’
A nice parallel to Jasper’s line “There is the man apart from his necessities” from Chp. 14. Gisslng suggest that in a capitalist society, the answer to Readon's question is that man apart from his economic capacity. And yes, to answer Readon directly, authors are really "clerks" - whether that's is his soul or not. Judging people in the abstract (e.g. as an artist or a moral or immoral person) apart from societal/economic circumstances is incomplete. I recognize this is a highly materialistic view of humanity.
So many despairing lines in this chapter. Yiyun quotes perhaps the most chilling, but it is by no means alone. "This one last effort he would make, just to complete the undeniableness of his failure..."
"They lived in dread of the pettiest casual expense..."
"The world has no pity on a man who can't do or produce something it thinks worth money."
It is excruciating to watch the demise of this marriage; this chapter offers some hope, though I fear Gissing is signaling to us that it's false. Even when behaving cruelly, Edwin makes me incredibly sad, perhaps because Gissing gives us the full scope of his suffering. He is on the brink of despair, and emotionally he is like a child. Amy is trapped in a bad situation with him, but she seems better equipped for life. I think she'll survive if things don't work out, though she'll be profoundly disillusioned and possibly embittered; Reardon likely won't.
What stands out for me in this chapter, other than the misery itself, is the detailed way in which Amy and Edwin discuss it and their feelings, thoughts, and relationship. So modern! Is there another Victorian novel like this?