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aliteraryprincess's review against another edition
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
alex_ellermann's review
3.0
‘Scenes of Clerical Life’ is early Eliot: promising and incisive, but not yet matured into the towering figure she would become.
The scenes of the title represent three short stories, or perhaps novelas, all centered around a fictional town in the British countryside. In some respects, the stories seem more character sketches and trial runs than fully engaging tales populated by real people. Nevertheless, Eliot’s remarkable prose entrances the reader, making one relish her work for its turns of phrase as much as for its plotting and theme.
Recommended for: Eliot Completists, Anglophiles
The scenes of the title represent three short stories, or perhaps novelas, all centered around a fictional town in the British countryside. In some respects, the stories seem more character sketches and trial runs than fully engaging tales populated by real people. Nevertheless, Eliot’s remarkable prose entrances the reader, making one relish her work for its turns of phrase as much as for its plotting and theme.
Recommended for: Eliot Completists, Anglophiles
ladybookdragon's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
reflective
sad
medium-paced
5.0
peskimo's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.0
vcmc's review
4.0
This book is made up of three novellas, The Sad Fortunes of the Rev Amos Barton, Mr Gilfil’s Love Story and Janet’s Repentance. This is the first published work by George Eliot and the writing is more patchy than the other books of hers that I have read however by the third story, I was hooked and found that story, Janet’s repentance in particular utterly compelling and very moving. She writes about domestic abuse and alcoholism in a way that resonates today- the woman’s inability to seek help even from her mother, people’s sympathy but silence and reluctance to intervene.
Alongside this sad theme, there is humour, romance, pastoral description, (a bit too much) religion.
I was totally won over by the book after a disappointing beginning.
Alongside this sad theme, there is humour, romance, pastoral description, (a bit too much) religion.
I was totally won over by the book after a disappointing beginning.
lashlees's review
4.0
O the anguish of that thought that we can never atone to our dead for the stinted affection we gave them, for the light answers we returned to their plaints or their pleadings, for the little reverence we showed to that sacred human soul that lived so close to us, and was the divinest thing God had given us to know.
George Eliot is everything. Until this, I had never read any George Eliot before. I do have a lot of time for Victorian literature and have done ever since I was a teenager. However, I admit that the sheer size of books like Middlemarch and The Mill on the Floss really put me off, a prejudice which I will seek to rectify in the future. When it comes to the nineteenth century, I tend to stick to Gaskell, Hardy and the Brontes - I know what I like. For some reason, I expected George Eliot's stuff to read a bit like Austen's: which to me means pleasant enough, but long; full of problematic characters and resolutions and ultimately unsatisfying(To be fair, I don't actually dislike Jane Austen. I recently re-read Northanger Abbey and enjoyed it much more the second time round. Probably because I'm just starting to 'get' her jokes). I don't know why I expected it to be like that, and I chalk it up to sheer laziness on my part.
In truth, she's far closer to Gaskell and Dickens, but even better. Both Gaskell and Dickens have a clear purpose, to reveal the 'reality' of the trials experienced by the voiceless underclass of society. 'Mary Barton' and 'Great Expectations' are two of my favourite books of all time, each sentence within them is meticulously crafted, but the novels are still problematic: there is a tendency to over-sentimentalise peasants, to imbue them with a inhuman degree of virtue and moral purity. Oliver Twist was probably one of the most one-dimensional and unrealistic depictions of an impoverished orphan I have ever come across. The effect this has on the reader can be uncomfortable, as it is clearly intended to inspire and congratulate itself on its own philanthropy. At times, the piety and sentiment borders on propaganda.
In this set of short stories, however, Eliot appears uncomfortably aware of the worn out tropes already well-established in 'realist' literature, and attempts to dispel them. The majority of her characters are flawed, interesting, and 'realistic'. From what little I know about the biographical details of George Eliot's life, I can assume that a lot of what is depicted is drawn from her own experiences as a daughter of a clergyman. In arguably the most striking of the three stories 'Janet's repentance', Eliot observes one of the most acute portrayals of domestic violence and addiction I have ever come across:
Janet's bitterness would overflow in ready words; she was not to be made meek by cruelty; she would repent of nothing in the face of injustice, though she was subdued in a moment by a word or a look that recalled the old days of fondness; and in times of comparative calm would often recover her sweet woman's habit of caressing playful affection. But such days were become rare, and poor Janet's soul was kept like a vexed sea, tossed by a new storm before the old waves have fallen. Proud, angry resistance and sullen endurance were now almost the only alternations she knew. She would bear it all proudly to the world, but proudly towards him too; her woman's weakness might shriek a cry for pity under a heavy blow, but voluntarily she would do nothing to mollify him, unless he first relented. What had she ever done to him but love him too well — but believe in him too foolishly? He had no pity on her tender flesh; he could strike the soft neck he had once asked to kiss. Yet she would not admit her wretchedness; she had married him blindly, and she would bear it out to the terrible end, whatever that might be. Better this misery than the blank that lay for her outside her married home.
This is Eliot's first foray into fiction, and as such it is somewhat flawed. Despite her truly radical attempt to flesh out stock characters and present a more morally ambiguous world, this is not always satisfactorily achieved: Mrs Barton remains a jarringly sweet, morally pure, and typical tragic gothic mother-figure (who, being a gothic trope, ultimately dies in childbirth, and infuriatingly pleads pious gratitude for her sorry lot on deathbed) an oversight that even Eliot at one point (somewhat winkingly) acknowledges to the reader. Additonally, when she does present the reader with complex characters and morally fraught situations, Eliot has a tendency to step in as the authorial voice and 'instruct' the reader on how best to empathise with the situation. Being a fan of Victorian literature, I have no real issue with an authorial voice (Charlotte Bronte regularly interrupts her own stories to indulge in a good rant, which to me was always part of her appeal), but it at times feels somewhat forced, as if its been lodged in as an afterthought in fear that the reader could not be trusted to make up their own mind.
My favourite of the three stories is probably the third and last, 'Janet's repentance', but I really do feel like this book should be read as a full text. All three stories are highly readable.
George Eliot is everything. Until this, I had never read any George Eliot before. I do have a lot of time for Victorian literature and have done ever since I was a teenager. However, I admit that the sheer size of books like Middlemarch and The Mill on the Floss really put me off, a prejudice which I will seek to rectify in the future. When it comes to the nineteenth century, I tend to stick to Gaskell, Hardy and the Brontes - I know what I like. For some reason, I expected George Eliot's stuff to read a bit like Austen's: which to me means pleasant enough, but long; full of problematic characters and resolutions and ultimately unsatisfying(To be fair, I don't actually dislike Jane Austen. I recently re-read Northanger Abbey and enjoyed it much more the second time round. Probably because I'm just starting to 'get' her jokes). I don't know why I expected it to be like that, and I chalk it up to sheer laziness on my part.
In truth, she's far closer to Gaskell and Dickens, but even better. Both Gaskell and Dickens have a clear purpose, to reveal the 'reality' of the trials experienced by the voiceless underclass of society. 'Mary Barton' and 'Great Expectations' are two of my favourite books of all time, each sentence within them is meticulously crafted, but the novels are still problematic: there is a tendency to over-sentimentalise peasants, to imbue them with a inhuman degree of virtue and moral purity. Oliver Twist was probably one of the most one-dimensional and unrealistic depictions of an impoverished orphan I have ever come across. The effect this has on the reader can be uncomfortable, as it is clearly intended to inspire and congratulate itself on its own philanthropy. At times, the piety and sentiment borders on propaganda.
In this set of short stories, however, Eliot appears uncomfortably aware of the worn out tropes already well-established in 'realist' literature, and attempts to dispel them. The majority of her characters are flawed, interesting, and 'realistic'. From what little I know about the biographical details of George Eliot's life, I can assume that a lot of what is depicted is drawn from her own experiences as a daughter of a clergyman. In arguably the most striking of the three stories 'Janet's repentance', Eliot observes one of the most acute portrayals of domestic violence and addiction I have ever come across:
Janet's bitterness would overflow in ready words; she was not to be made meek by cruelty; she would repent of nothing in the face of injustice, though she was subdued in a moment by a word or a look that recalled the old days of fondness; and in times of comparative calm would often recover her sweet woman's habit of caressing playful affection. But such days were become rare, and poor Janet's soul was kept like a vexed sea, tossed by a new storm before the old waves have fallen. Proud, angry resistance and sullen endurance were now almost the only alternations she knew. She would bear it all proudly to the world, but proudly towards him too; her woman's weakness might shriek a cry for pity under a heavy blow, but voluntarily she would do nothing to mollify him, unless he first relented. What had she ever done to him but love him too well — but believe in him too foolishly? He had no pity on her tender flesh; he could strike the soft neck he had once asked to kiss. Yet she would not admit her wretchedness; she had married him blindly, and she would bear it out to the terrible end, whatever that might be. Better this misery than the blank that lay for her outside her married home.
This is Eliot's first foray into fiction, and as such it is somewhat flawed. Despite her truly radical attempt to flesh out stock characters and present a more morally ambiguous world, this is not always satisfactorily achieved: Mrs Barton remains a jarringly sweet, morally pure, and typical tragic gothic mother-figure (who, being a gothic trope, ultimately dies in childbirth, and infuriatingly pleads pious gratitude for her sorry lot on deathbed) an oversight that even Eliot at one point (somewhat winkingly) acknowledges to the reader. Additonally, when she does present the reader with complex characters and morally fraught situations, Eliot has a tendency to step in as the authorial voice and 'instruct' the reader on how best to empathise with the situation. Being a fan of Victorian literature, I have no real issue with an authorial voice (Charlotte Bronte regularly interrupts her own stories to indulge in a good rant, which to me was always part of her appeal), but it at times feels somewhat forced, as if its been lodged in as an afterthought in fear that the reader could not be trusted to make up their own mind.
My favourite of the three stories is probably the third and last, 'Janet's repentance', but I really do feel like this book should be read as a full text. All three stories are highly readable.
sietz's review
5.0
The middle story, Mr Gilfil’s Love Story, was extraordinarily well written. It earned it the five stars. George Eliot is an absolute genius.
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