Secure A Copy The Ordeal Of Richard Feveral Drafted By George Meredith Distributed In Softcover
hoped for something as good as The Egoist and I expected something not too much worse, and I don't know exactly what I got, Feverel defies adequate description insofar as it's unlike any novel I've read, in certain ways, It's quite a curiosity. It operates on a metaphorical level that suspends narrative events somewhere outside reality, challenging one's sense of where and when and how, for that matter the action takes place.
This is a novel savvy in pagan mythology and Oriental customs and shamelessly disposed to hypophora, in which one can catch a character "serenely chanting Greek hexameters" or read that a "candle wore with dignity the brigand's hat of midnight, and cocked a drunken eye.
. . under it. "
It was strange overall, not a little unsettling or surprisingly overt in its sexual politics, spectacular at certain prose passages, and weak on organization, It strongly reminded me of watching The Magnificent Ambersons: the genius flashes forth periodically, but better assembly is required, The narrative lacked proportion as a whole, instead proceeding in the choppy tracks of a novelist maybe learning his chops Feverel was Meredith's first novel, after all.
His people, too, are dubiously motivated and rather unnaturally drawn because their representation is subordinated to that of ideational forces, which brings to mind something Forster wrote about Meredith's characters being other than human, or his novels painting other than life, but which isn't necessarily bad mostly different, the way it's managed here.
On the whole, I'd call Feverel heavily idiosyncratic if that sufficiently conveyed the distance it measures from your standard work of fiction, let alone your trusty Victorian classic.
I read this for a class, It was a little too recondite for my taste,novels everyone must read: the definitive list: Family and Self
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A work of linguistic erudition, some humour and a story of misguided paternal guidance and Rules, Richard develops from an arsonist youth to a confused, weak and passionate adult, buffeted by benevolent and malevolent friends, relations and acquaintances, Inevitably or avoidably it all ends in tears, Quite enjoyable but sometimes frustrating moral assumptions and outcomes! The Ordeal of Richard Feverel is a Victorian bildungsroman that follows the early life of an heir raised and educated according to a "System" of his father's devising.
When I heard about the book, it was described as a philosophical novel, and it is so in the best sense: the characters are motivated by certain ideas, and the novel explores what the fruit of those ideas is.
The sitelinkalternative is that the author holds certain ideas, and clumsily manipulates his characters in inhuman figures, to pantomime support for his positions,
What is strange is that we never really learn a great deal about what this System comprises, In practical terms, it doesn't amount to much more than an attempt to expose the pupil to good example, and exclude him from bad example, But what is essential to
it is that a person is controllable, and that with the right management, can transcend typical human nature, As a result, the System represents grand Victorian pseudosciences in general, and the vanity of attempting to understand and control a person,
What felt very Victorian to me is that way in which particular characters correspond to different ideas, and a nuanced exploration of those ideas is achieved by their successes and failures.
The author's own position is revealed in the triangulation of these, The father fails, since nature is too great to be understood or controlled by a system and a system is too great for mere nature to attain to, Yet the opposite of a System is not educated cynicism: the uncle's hedonism works nothing but harm, Nor is the solution a Romantic exaltation of Passion or Nature, which aims pridefully for the transcendent, and hence works no good to human flourishing, In the end, the conclusion seems to be a Tolstoyan elevation of the simple religious goodness of the peasant, a natural human kindness undisturbed by education,
The critique of Victorian theorising is well made, and the exposure of the impotence and cruelty of such systems when brought into contact with the human heart is the major strength of the novel.
Yet its length means this material is exhausted, and much of TOORF is mere moral fable, seeking to instruct by showing the result of actions rather than ideas, Since the characters depend on their ideas, this sucked out their depth and made them uninteresting,
This is exacerbated by the fact that the writing is strangely mixed, Some sections are glorious, but they fall between slow deserts, Meredith writes best when describing the young, managing to capture the virtue of high spirits and keenly felt emotions, whilst holding them at a certain knowing remove with wry even parodic writing.
Yet as the comedy develops into a tragedy, this charm is withdrawn, and I found much of the book a slog,
TOORF contains an interesting novel, exploring the cruelty and vanity of trying to control the human heart, But this is swamped by long periods with little of interest in terms of ideas, character or writing, "Of all nineteenthcentury English novels, " claims Edward Mendelson in his Introduction to this edition, "The Ordeal of Richard Feverel is the most selfconsciously literary in its style and structure and the most sexually explicit in its plot and theme.
" First published in, Meredith's first and most controversial novel concerns Sir Austin Feverel's misconceived attempts to educate his son Richard according to a system of his own devising a system based on theories of sexual restraint.
Exploring generational and gender conflicts, the psychology of sexual jealousy and repression, and myths of Eden and Utopia, The Ordeal of Richard Feverel shocked Victorian readers but gained for itself a cult following.
"Now that it has been freed from its reputation, " writes Mendelson, "readers can discover again the tragic and ironic force, and the psychological and formal complexity that make The Ordeal of Richard Feverel one of the most profound, subtle, and moving works of English fiction.
"
This is not a bad book, But I had trouble reading it, I tried, maybe not too hard, to keep myself being interested, And again and again, reading a couple of pages I realized, that I did not really understand what was going on, Meredith is not easy to read, but also not extremely difficult, And as so often in such cases, I would like to split the blame equally between him and myself,
So, what is the ordeal The young Richard is not allowed to go to school, Because his father thinks that this would corrupt him, Wiseguy, the father. He has a "system". Speaking of wisdom, all through the book we get some more or less appropriate aphorisms from the Pilgims scrip,
Richard gets into trouble when after being horsewhipped by some farmer for trespassing he finds it appropriate to burn down the place, This sounds more exciting than it really is, The action goes on in the mind of our hero, Whether to accept responsibility. First, he and his friend try to free the guy who gets blamed out of prison, just like Tom amp Huck,
Then, of course, in due time, he falls in love with the niece of the farmer, And the one thing extraordinary in this novel is that he just marries her, Not at the end of the novel but in the middle,
And the woman is a dairymaid and catholic, He is onlyyears old at the time, And you guessed it, the father is not amused,
Then there is a long lost mother, a cousin, who had hoped to get poor Richard and promptly dies, And a villain trying to seduce the young wife, A son. Hero being seduced. We even get a duel, But only in passing.
I wish I could report, that in the end, all is well, But no. I also wish I could have cared,/I think this book would appeal to those who readthcentury fiction, but who'd also enjoy some modernity to go along with it, Just when you think Meredith is writing a stockthcentury character or a 'typical' plot line, he turns it on its head, Honor, romantic notions, and pride are skewered, The only characters with any common sense who actually get things done are an earthy landlady and a nephew of Lord Feverel, one who's married a housemaid and actually works at something useful.
There is humor, mostly of the ironical kind, and tragedy, also ironic, The tone changes as we get to the last chapter, which is narrated by one of the characters a bland character who has become quite emotional instead of the detached narrator whose disembodied voice previously dominated in various ways.
I don't believe I've read anything like this book before as far asthc literature goes,
In later revisions to this book, Meredith took out the first four chapters, another chapter about Sir Feverel visiting a Mrs Grandison and her daughters as he searches for a wife for his son one that will fit his System, and some of the dialogue spoken by the landlady and another nephew, Adrian, the "Wise Youth.
" I'm glad I read this edition with the restored cuts: otherwise, I would've missed out on some of the funniest bits, The ordeal ends with defeat by this book, can only stomachI'm giving up on this one, Parts of this were very funny! Though I don't recommend this to anyone I know
Plot summary for anyone curious: Sir Austin Feverels wife runs off with his best friend.
Sir Austin is left behind at Rayhnham Abbey with his son Richard, Richard gets in a scrape with a local farmer, When Richard goes to apologize, he meets the farmers niece, Lucy Desborough, When Richard is, his father travels to London to seek an appropriate bride for his son, Meanwhile, Richard meets Lucy again and falls in love, The spark of love threatens to explode the strict “System” of education that Sir Austin insists upon for his son, Richard marries Lucy and they head off for the Isle of Wight, On the Isle of Wight, Richard and Lucy fall under the bad influence of Lady Judith and Lord Mountfalcon, Richard decides to leave his wife on the Isle of Wight and travel to London to meet his father, Richard waitsweeks in London and still his father does not come to meet him, In the meantime, he goes to a dinner at Richmond where a beautiful Mrs, Mount flirts with him. Meanwhile, Lord Mountfalcon has stayed on the Isle of Wight even though the season is rainy and windy because he loves Lucy, He is about to declare his love for Lucy when the servant Mrs, Bessy Berry arrives. Lucy confesses that she has not heard from her husband and that she is pregnant, Mrs. Berry takes Lucy back to London where she gives birth, Richard learns that Lord Mountfalcon was trying to seduce Lucy, He says goodbye to Lucy and duels Lord Mountfalcon in France, Lucy loses her mind and dies, This book was mentioned in A Life of Letter of Arthur Conan Doyle, Oscar Wilde exclaimed "Ah, Meredith! Who can define him His syle is chaos illumined by flashes of lightning, " I enjoy George Meredith, I really do, but this was not, . . how do I say this, . . well, GOOD. The dense literariness was there, The dripping irony was there, The philosophizing was there, though not as refined as in his later works, But the plot It was just, . . silly. I can't even make sense of what each character was trying to accomplish, I think Meredith just wanted , and he figured the reader wouldn't notice that he fudged his way around it.
I noticed, George! wags finger You gotta make your biggest plot point actually make sense, buddy, or all your literariness and irony and philosophizing will fall flat for me.
When every single character is plotting something that has nothing to do with everyone else's plots, yet it all adds up to a perfectly seamless persecution against one specific character with a result that somehow none of these people expected yet was pretty boringly inevitable.
. . well, it's silly. That's all I can say,
But I forgive him, It was his first novel, He got a lot better,
By the way, how did he even get away with publishing this in the Victorian era It got pretty racy in an innuendoy way, Actually, in pretty overt ways in a couple scenes, not gonna lie, Nearly gave me the vapours!,