I've started working on Chapter 2, the George Eliot chapter. I have much of Chapter 1—the Christina Rossetti chapter—done already since it was the paper I submitted as part of comps, and the committee suggested I move on to another chapter before coming back to it.
Working on George Eliot makes me very happy. I have no freakin' idea what I'm going to say about her epigraphs (the topic I made up to have something to put in my prospectus), but the research is fun. Some friends of ours are having a baby shower for some other friends who are having a girl, and it's a book shower—everyone is supposed to bring a book as a present. Of course I knew instantly that I would be bringing Middlemarch. I prescribe that novel to all young women, and to everyone else as well. I first read it in my late twenties, but I wish I had read it earlier, because certain themes—like the academic crush—would have been pertinent.
On every page you'll find a sentence with a complication, a witty or surprising turn. And then there are her warmth and sympathy that shine through quotes like this one. She never writes anyone off, which makes one not write oneself off.
2 comments:
Because I'm always on the lookout for new reading material, I am taking your advice to read Middlemarch. I was going to check the library, but I thought it might be even better to check dailylit.com. They have it! For free! Now I can read it in snippets at my desk. Cheers!
Buttercup, I hadn't heard of that site but it's brilliant! I'm going to try it out.
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