May. 19th, 2010

There is a scene midway through Deborah Weisgall's The World Before Her in which Marian Evans (later to be known as George Eliot) attends a party thrown by Franz Liszt at which he plays a duet with Clara Schumann. She describes her sharp feelings of envy watching these two musicians play. Despite the fact that Clara's husband (the infamously insane composer Robert Schumann) is in a madhouse and Clara is supporting their eight children, (later someone corrects this supposition, "Seven, one of them died,") Marian envies Clara. She has what Marian longs for especially the legitimacy she possesses in her marriage and her children. Liszt, who was a great admirer of Evans even before she became George Eliot, motions to Marian to come turn pages for them, "She understood that he wished for her to turn pages for them, but she could not. It represented too closely what she feared herself to be: an amanuensis, invisible, ignored, though she might be standing before an audience." (p152)

An imperfect overview of a deeply affecting book... )

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zalena

June 2015

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