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I've recently seen this rather facile apercu attributed to George Eliot, but without a specific source. Is it genuine? It seems a most un-Eliotic thought to me. Having Middlemarch fairly fresh in my mind, it strikes me that it's a book all about the realization that it's too late to be what one might have been. Look at Lydgate! Look at Casaubon! Look at Lydgate again!
I've not read all of Eliot by any means, and maybe she has her lapses into airheaded optimism, but I find it hard to imagine. I might have bought the quotation had it been attributed to Dickens, but even Scrooge can never be what he might have been - the contented husband of Belle. He can only be what he can still become, someone who "knows how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possesses the knowledge." Which may be better or may be worse, but certainly isn't the same.
I've not read all of Eliot by any means, and maybe she has her lapses into airheaded optimism, but I find it hard to imagine. I might have bought the quotation had it been attributed to Dickens, but even Scrooge can never be what he might have been - the contented husband of Belle. He can only be what he can still become, someone who "knows how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possesses the knowledge." Which may be better or may be worse, but certainly isn't the same.
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Date: 2011-05-09 09:50 pm (UTC)If you did not intend those sentences to be read in the voice of the Old Spice Guy, I can only tell you that it's a natural fit anyway.
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Date: 2011-05-09 10:40 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2011-05-09 11:42 pm (UTC)This is not to say that Eliot definitively didn't; nobody seems to have been able to find a source for sure, but that one seems likely.
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From:Funny, Must Be Synchronicity?
Date: 2011-05-10 09:21 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-05-10 09:58 am (UTC)Lydgate's understanding of his commitment to Rosamund's being absolute might not fit with our understanding today, but one doesn't have to apply the parallels narrowly in order to see that there's always an opportunity now to choose, even within the constraints of one's past choices and their responsibilities. Oh - look at Mrs Bulstrode? The possibility of ever again being the respected figure in her society is taken away from her, but she absolutely becomes much, much more in that painful decision to be loyal to her husband, taken at a time in her life when she might well have decided she couldn't give up everything she'd always thought important. She's a nice counterpoint for Casaubon, showing that it wasn't too late for him to etc.
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Date: 2011-05-10 03:23 pm (UTC)And this you say to me already? :oD