From George Eliot

Would you believe, I am still reading Romola by George Eliot? I set it aside a long time ago, after a misprint in my first copy then other books needing to be read for bookclub drew it to a halt. But I picked it up again these holidays. It hasn’t been easy reading, full of lyrical waxing on historical Florence, which, while interesting, is not always easy to grasp entirely. There is also the sense of foreboding in the two protagonist’s relationship, and a part of me has recoiled from having to watch its disintegration.

I have been enjoying it more of late however, as it has begun to be more liberally sprinkled with Eliot’s characteristic insights into human nature. Here’s an example, of a few things I underlined:

There was still one resource open to Tito. He might have turned back ... confessed everything ... But he never thought of that. The repentance which cuts off all moorings to evil, demands something more than selfish fear. He had no sense that there was strength and safety in truth; the only strength he trusted to lay in his ingenuity and his dissimulation.

...

Romola was labouring, as a loving woman must, to subdue her nature to her husband’s. The great need of her heart compelled her to strangle, with desperate resolution, every rising impulse of suspicion, pride, and resentment; she felt equal to any self-infliction that would save her from ceasing to love. That would have been like the hideous nightmare in which the world had seemed to break away all around her, and leave her feet overhanging the darkness. Romola had never distinctly imagined such a future for herself; she was only beginning to feel the presence of effort in that clinging trust which had once been mere repose.

...

Love does not aim simply at the conscious good of the beloved object: it is not satisfied without perfect loyalty of heart; it aims at its own completeness.