Teaching, Living, and Learning: FELIX HOLT, THE RADICAL by George Eliot

Sunday, June 27, 2010

FELIX HOLT, THE RADICAL by George Eliot

It's been awhile since I've posted on this reading journal ... but I'm back today to talk briefly about my reading of George Eliot's Felix Holt, the Radical. It's a confusing plot, I must say, and it's all I can do to keep up with the twists and turns. I've decided to simply read more slowly, occasionally rereading paragraphs or pages, so that. I can keep the movements of the plot clearly in mind. However, despite the confusion, I love the beautifully elegant passages I find on almost every page. Eliot has a "way with words" that is unsurpassed by any writer I can think of.

At this point in the book (Ch. 22), lawyer Jermyn has discovered a family secret about the Transomes that he seems to be holding for future use as blackmail. (The secret also involves Esther, the adopted orphan daughter of the preacher Rufus.)

No comments:

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

I found this quote (below) in Jane Austen's Mansfield Park. She's describing Fanny Price's home at Mansfield, but the words exactly remind me of the atmosphere I try to maintain in my classroom:
" ... no sounds of contention, no raised voice, no abrupt bursts, no tread of violence, was ever heard; all proceeded in a regular course of cheerful orderliness; everybody had their due importance; everybody's feelings were consulted."

...........

The following quote is from David Copperfield by Charles Dickens. I would like my classroom to be like Dr. Strong's school:

"Dr. Strong's was an excellent school...It was very gravely and decorously ordered, and on a sound system; with an appeal, in everything, to the honor and good faith of the [students], and an avowed intention to rely on their possession of these qualities unless they proved themselves unworthy of it, which worked wonders. We all felt that we had a share in the management of the place, and in sustaining its character and dignity."

If I replaced "agent" with "teacher", this passage from a short story might, I hope, describe me in my classroom:
"The agent spent his days in following what seemed to many observers to be only a dull routine, but all his steadiness of purpose, all his simple intentness, all his gifts of strategy and powers of foresight, and of turning an interruption into an opportunity, were brought to bear upon this dull routine with a keen pleasure."
-- from "The Gray Mills of Farley" by Sarah Orne Jewett