“He was not strong enough to reply with a plain ‘Yes,’ and so have done with his perplexities.”
This moment doesn’t make Milvain a better person, but it does make him a humane character: however calculating, he cannot make himself entirely ruthless.
“The success of Chit-Chat keeps him in good spirits.”
Gissing might not have meant to be funny, but I laughed out loud here. Really one of the most comic lines in this heavy novel.
“Whether I marry Marian or Miss Rupert, I sacrifice my strongest feelings—in the one case to a sense of duty, in the other to worldly advantage.”
Yes, yes, a perpetual dilemma faced by a certain subset of young men!
Join us on December 13 for a virtual discussion of New Grub Street with Yiyun Li.
Although Mrs. Yule has lost the help of a servant, "the disaster to the family was distinctly a gain," for Albert "no longer visited her with the fury or contemptuous impatience of former days."
I was surprised at Jasper's assessment of Whelpdale (vis-à-vis Dora) in regards to class - "But what business has he to write at all? It's confounded impertinence, now I come to think of it. I shall give him a hint to remember his position." Apparently no matter how much money Whelpdale makes, Jasper will consider him nouveau riche and unfit for Dora. I was also surprised by Whelpdale's "I'm not a big gun, like you!"
Maud talks "with laughing scorn of the days when she inhabited Grub Street," and is content to shine where the worlds of fashionable literature and fashionable ignorance meet. Apparently she is adding a touch of refinement to her community of dubious wealth.
OK, so Jasper's machiavellian move reflects poorly in light of his most recent conversation with Marian, but his eyes are on his future and his future is at war with his heart. I am nonetheless impressed at his difficulty in lying to Dora. I do wonder if news of his proposal to Miss Rupert will get back to Marian.
We are getting to see the winners and losers now - I know that life isn't fair, but if it were, Marian should be the big winner. Gissing is opining with each reveal.
Jasper is so out of there. “ . . .she slipped her hand softly within his arm; but Jasper did not put the arm into position to support hers, and her hand fell again, dropped suddenly.” By adding Marian’s other responsibilities, Gissing makes Jasper’s decision even easier than if Marian was left with, say, $2k and no sick father. But Jasper would be gone anyway. Sticking with penniless Marian would be the decision in a lovely book (think Trollope’s Dr. Thorne) but NGS has taken a different path.