This is... funny...?

So while looking at various reception articles, I came across this very strange series of "reviews" featured in the George Eliot -- George Henry Lewes Studies (volume 44-45) regarding the BBC Daniel Deronda production. Some of the comments are surprisingly kind of funny:

"There's little surprise in a corset."

"Grandcourt's name might as well be 'Lord Potato Dauphinoise of Grand Guffawing Castle'..."

Of the director of the movie himself:

"very good at narrative drive, but deaf to nuance"

Rambling

Okay, so I don't know why I'm burning the midnight oil after a week of missing sleep, except I can't seem to turn off my brain after that combination of writing and research.

I'm thinking about using some of my spare time to check out The Spanish Gypsy or some of the works by George Eliot preceding Daniel Deronda. Apparently it's possible to see Eliot's thought-progression by looking at her works. That, and checking out Ivanhoe, because surprisingly (for me at least) Sir Walter Scott has had an influence on her writing. It may be worth looking into.

And here's the cutie of the week:

JOY TO THE WORLD~

So very, very happy I finished my paper on time. WHEW. Writing that fast felt like finishing a marathon as gloriously as possible without all the external glitter and all of the internal ones. But it was kinda fun, in a semi-masochistic way considering how the process of research and organizing that research can be both incredibly interesting and creatively painful.

I found that getting my Works Cited page in order was what almost made me submit my paper late -- I neglected organizing my Works Cited until I finished the paper, so there I was with only 10 minutes left and a glitchy computer causing me to type at a slower speed than my usual breakneck pace. And then I realized that converting from single-spaced to double-spaced text all over really messes with the original formatting. And then I forgot to cite my Daniel Deronda text of all things. This meant I had a Works Cited floating in the middle of a page, and Works Consulted separated from the Works Cited by an entire blank page, and a missing citation. Ergghhh. I really need to take mine to the LTS sometime...

But hey, everyone, we're done! Cheers, and have a cute otter pup!

*rageface*

I think I might have to scrap my original thesis after all -- the biographical evidence feels a bit sketchy to me, not enough to base 6 pages' worth on (I'm still looking for more though!). I kind of want to bang my head into the wall. Right now I'm thinking about perhaps reflecting how GE's relationship with the men in her life are affecting her portrayals of the men in DD. This may or may not work out...

Here's to hope!

*headdesk*

My brains are leaking out of my ears.

Some of it has to do with the fact that I can't quite pin down my 'thesis'. The wording is driving me absolutely batty, and I'm beginning to wonder if I need to restructure the thesis itself. I've even neglected my blog in favor of fine-combing Daniel Deronda -- so many ideas I like, so little time. *inundates the Nile ahead of schedule with metaphorical tears of frustration* I feel so much like the hamster in this picture:

Cheers all, and hopefully you all have better success than me.

Testing + discussion about Lady Audley's Secret

Okay, so here goes the first post (spoilers may follow for Lady Audley's Secret):

As I've read Georgette Heyer's works (notably "These Old Shades" and "Frederica" among others), I find that Robert Audley really resembles some of the heroes in them. He's very laid-back and unassuming, until he gets his dander up and the cogs in his brain start to turn. Upon further research, it's interesting to find that "Lady Audley's Secret" came out in 1862 as opposed to Heyer's novels published in the 1920s-1970s. So it would seem that Braddon may have influenced Heyer's portrayals of male protagonists.

Further away from research, I'm struck by this dilemma: just how much of Lady Audley's behavior is perfectly merited? I won't explicitly reveal anything for those of you who haven't finished the book, but it was a question that I kept thinking about while reading it through to the end. A woman like her can't have had an easy time of it, and taken in light of some of the things women do today to climb the social ladder, her behavior is not at all "unusual." I would say she is opportunistic, but not that word that others in the novel have called her. How much of it is simply circumstance, the cultural norms of the Victorian period passing down judgment and confining her actions? How much of it is really premeditated cruelty?