The Nether World Timeless Wisdom Collection George Gissing 9781534796522 Books
Download As PDF : The Nether World Timeless Wisdom Collection George Gissing 9781534796522 Books
George Robert Gissing (1857 – 1903) was an English novelist who published 23 novels between 1880 and 1903. The Nether World is among his most famous ones, and it concerns several poor families living in the slums of 19th century London. Rich in naturalistic detail, it concentrates on the individual problems and hardships which result from the typical shortages experienced by the lower classes — want of money, employment and decent living conditions. It is a pessimistic novel in a pessimistic world, as it depicts exclusively the lives of poor people there is no juxtaposition with the world of the rich.
The Nether World Timeless Wisdom Collection George Gissing 9781534796522 Books
It is fortunate indeed that Gissing, while exploring the seediest region of the capital of the British Empire at the close of the 19th century, and relating the loathsome conditions of its denizens, neither lost himself in maudlin meanderings as Dickens was wont to, nor did he, like Hardy, ordain every possible, however improbable, reason for distress to befall a single character. Gissing doles out calamities widely, plus, rather than resorting to prolix ramblings to point out what disgusts him, he makes concise remarks: "Society produces many a monster, but the mass of those whom, after creating them, it pronounces bad are merely bad from the conventional point of view; they are guilty of weaknesses, not of crimes" (chapter XXIX); "Poverty makes a crime of every indulgence" (chapter XXXI).Now, in terms of framing the drama, Gissing is, as honest and loyal Sidney Kirkwood professed himself in chapter XXXI too, "not one of those people who use every accident to point a moral, and begin by inventing the moral to suit their own convictions."
While the human baseness and general ordeal of the penurious population laid bare in this volume appalled me all along, its phrasing fascinated me: even those descriptions of the most gruesome environments and reflections on utter anguish are simply gorgeous if astonishing also. For instance:
"On all the doorsteps sat little girls, themselves only just out of infancy, nursing or neglecting bald, red-eyed, doughy-limbed abortions in every stage of babyhood, hapless spawn of diseased humanity, born to embitter and brutalise yet further the lot of those who unwillingly gave them life. With wide, pitiful eyes Jane looked at each group she passed. Three years ago she would have seen nothing but the ordinary and the inevitable in such spectacles, but since then her moral and intellectual being had grown on rare nourishment; there was indignation as well as heartache in the feeling with which she had learnt to regard the world of her familiarity." (chapter XV)
"The tendencies which we agree to call good and bad became in her (Clara, the aspiring actress)merely directions of a native force which was at all times in revolt against circumstance. Characters thus moulded may go far in achievement, but can never pass beyond the bounds of suffering. Never is the world their friend, nor the world's law." (chapter XXXII)
Think of Hardy expounding on the countryside; although Gissing's object of observation is the metropolis, the zeal and detail wherewith Hardy executed his portrayals is also a feature in this book, nevertheless it now serves to illustrate corruption and degradation:
"John Hewett was not the only father who has come forth after nightfall from an obscure home to look darkly at the faces passing on these broad pavements. At times he would shrink into a shadowed corner, and peer thence at those who went by under the gaslight. When he moved forward, it was with the uneasy gait of one who shuns observation; you would have thought, perchance, that he watched an opportunity of begging and was shamefaced: it happened now and then that he was regarded suspiciously. A rough-looking man, with grizzled beard, with eyes generally bloodshot, his shoulders stooping—naturally the miserable are always suspected where law is conscious of its injustice." (chapter XXIV)
Therefore, as far as the subject matter is concerned, I consider "The People of the Abyss" by Jack London the "The Nether World"'s true next of kin; nay, a perfect supplement also, since the former work is a brutal yet authentic account of the author's personal experience as a hobo in the East End slums of his namesake city fourteen years after Gissing's tale was published.
Still, all is not bitterness in the Nether World: as though driven by the sentence "To pity, without the power to relieve, is still more painful than to ask and be denied" (spoken by Surface in Sheridan's "The School for Scandal"; Act V., Scene I.), Michael Snowdon, with the view of alleviating somehow the woes of his fellow Clerkenwellers, imposes a tremendous task on his granddaughter Jane, which task entails many sacrifices for her whose childhood had been marked by cruelty and humiliation before he, on a happy and wholly unexpected turn in his position (Michael Snowdon comes into possession of wealth), rescued her, but alas! later on Mr. Snowdon curtailed Jane's own desires and natural development for the sake of his project, thus becoming, despite his altruistic designs for the legions of the damned, a tyrant himself to his ward. Big irony, uh? Well, here's another one - this book is so dismal that it dazzles.
Beside Jane's father Joseph, a downright scoundrel, Mrs Peckover and her vulgar daughter Clem, a pair of vengeful scheming harpies, the chief agents of tragedy are abstract forces present within every person, regardless of class, for it is avarice, hatred, envy, ambition, laziness and cowardice that bring about disgrace to the Nether World folk. Moreover, contrary to the Dickensian formula, there is no easy and sudden solution to their troubles, as no angel of salvation appears out of the blue (or the grey, rather, in this case) to deliver comfort to the victims, and precious little retribution against the villains is effected (and that, as mere consequence of their actions, not by divine intervention).
Therefore this work is definitely not recommended to the faint-hearted idealists, but at any rate it might appeal to your sympathy for the oppressed - and I quote Gissing again to clinch my commentary: "It is a virtuous world, and our frequent condemnations are invariably based on justice; will it be greatly harmful if for once we temper our righteous judgment with ever so little mercy?" (chapter XXXII).
Product details
|
Tags : The Nether World (Timeless Wisdom Collection) [George Gissing] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. George Robert Gissing (1857 – 1903) was an English novelist who published 23 novels between 1880 and 1903. The Nether World is among his most famous ones,George Gissing,The Nether World (Timeless Wisdom Collection),CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform,1534796525,FICTION Classics
People also read other books :
- Dead Birmingham The Roland Longville Mystery Series Book 3 edition by Timothy C Phillips Mystery Thriller Suspense eBooks
- The Apocalypse Survivors The Undead World Novel 2 The Undead World Series eBook Peter Meredith
- Finding Hope A Nugget Romance Book 2 edition by Stacy Finz Literature Fiction eBooks
- Carrying the Fire An Astronaut Journeys (Audible Audio Edition) Michael Collins Charles A Lindbergh foreword David Colacci Tantor Audio Books
- The Beauties of the Bosphorus Classic Reprint Miss Pardoe 9781332103928 Books
The Nether World Timeless Wisdom Collection George Gissing 9781534796522 Books Reviews
The Nether World is a novel about the Victorian poor of London, a community so exhaustively described in novels, that I think I know more about them than I know about poor Americans in 2016.
But Gissing's problem, a problem encountered by other novelists, is that the Victorian poor are not interesting people. They work brutal jobs, they beat their wives, they have unwanted children, and they drink themselves to death. At any given moment, most of the characters in The Nether World are doing one of these things -- which in a sense, makes this a good portrait. Gissing's sociological observations are very sharp, and this might have been an excellent 100-page report on social conditions.
But working and drinking alone do not make a novel. In this case, the portrait of poor Londoners is tacked to a winding, meretricious, very Victorian plot. Somebody gets sulfuric acid splashed in her face, and another person dies the day before he writes his will. At the climax -- almost simultaneously -- the heroine is disinherited, her grandfather dies, her father flees the country, and her lover marries another woman. These calamities may or may not make a good novel, but maybe they don't quite mesh with the realism Gissing is trying to project.
On the other hand, what I enjoyed most about New Grub Street was Gissing's bitter hatred for everything, and The Nether World has a fair amount of that, too. I especially liked his chapter set on the August Bank Holiday, regarding the jolly crowds of workers taking a rare vacation. Most writers would join in the fun, but not Gissing
"One of the livelier groups is surging hitherwards; here we have frolic, here we have humour. The young man who leads them has been going about all day with the lining of his hat turned down over his forehead; for the thousandth time those girls are screaming with laughter at the sight of him. Ha, ha! He has slipped and fallen upon the floor, and makes an obstruction; his companions treat him like a horse that is 'down' in the street. 'Look out for 'is heels!' cries one; and another, "Sit on his 'ed!' If this doesn't come to an end we shall die of laughter. Lo! one of the funniest of the party is wearing a gigantic cardboard nose and flame-coloured whiskers. There, the stumbler is on his feet again. ''Ere he comes up smilin'!' cries his friend of the cardboard nose, and we shake our diaphragms with mirth. One of the party is an unusually tall man. 'When are you comin' down to have a look at us?' cries a pert lass as she skips by him.
"A great review of the People. Since man came into being did the world ever exhibit a sadder spectacle?"
It is fortunate indeed that Gissing, while exploring the seediest region of the capital of the British Empire at the close of the 19th century, and relating the loathsome conditions of its denizens, neither lost himself in maudlin meanderings as Dickens was wont to, nor did he, like Hardy, ordain every possible, however improbable, reason for distress to befall a single character. Gissing doles out calamities widely, plus, rather than resorting to prolix ramblings to point out what disgusts him, he makes concise remarks "Society produces many a monster, but the mass of those whom, after creating them, it pronounces bad are merely bad from the conventional point of view; they are guilty of weaknesses, not of crimes" (chapter XXIX); "Poverty makes a crime of every indulgence" (chapter XXXI).
Now, in terms of framing the drama, Gissing is, as honest and loyal Sidney Kirkwood professed himself in chapter XXXI too, "not one of those people who use every accident to point a moral, and begin by inventing the moral to suit their own convictions."
While the human baseness and general ordeal of the penurious population laid bare in this volume appalled me all along, its phrasing fascinated me even those descriptions of the most gruesome environments and reflections on utter anguish are simply gorgeous if astonishing also. For instance
"On all the doorsteps sat little girls, themselves only just out of infancy, nursing or neglecting bald, red-eyed, doughy-limbed abortions in every stage of babyhood, hapless spawn of diseased humanity, born to embitter and brutalise yet further the lot of those who unwillingly gave them life. With wide, pitiful eyes Jane looked at each group she passed. Three years ago she would have seen nothing but the ordinary and the inevitable in such spectacles, but since then her moral and intellectual being had grown on rare nourishment; there was indignation as well as heartache in the feeling with which she had learnt to regard the world of her familiarity." (chapter XV)
"The tendencies which we agree to call good and bad became in her (Clara, the aspiring actress)merely directions of a native force which was at all times in revolt against circumstance. Characters thus moulded may go far in achievement, but can never pass beyond the bounds of suffering. Never is the world their friend, nor the world's law." (chapter XXXII)
Think of Hardy expounding on the countryside; although Gissing's object of observation is the metropolis, the zeal and detail wherewith Hardy executed his portrayals is also a feature in this book, nevertheless it now serves to illustrate corruption and degradation
"John Hewett was not the only father who has come forth after nightfall from an obscure home to look darkly at the faces passing on these broad pavements. At times he would shrink into a shadowed corner, and peer thence at those who went by under the gaslight. When he moved forward, it was with the uneasy gait of one who shuns observation; you would have thought, perchance, that he watched an opportunity of begging and was shamefaced it happened now and then that he was regarded suspiciously. A rough-looking man, with grizzled beard, with eyes generally bloodshot, his shoulders stooping—naturally the miserable are always suspected where law is conscious of its injustice." (chapter XXIV)
Therefore, as far as the subject matter is concerned, I consider "The People of the Abyss" by Jack London the "The Nether World"'s true next of kin; nay, a perfect supplement also, since the former work is a brutal yet authentic account of the author's personal experience as a hobo in the East End slums of his namesake city fourteen years after Gissing's tale was published.
Still, all is not bitterness in the Nether World as though driven by the sentence "To pity, without the power to relieve, is still more painful than to ask and be denied" (spoken by Surface in Sheridan's "The School for Scandal"; Act V., Scene I.), Michael Snowdon, with the view of alleviating somehow the woes of his fellow Clerkenwellers, imposes a tremendous task on his granddaughter Jane, which task entails many sacrifices for her whose childhood had been marked by cruelty and humiliation before he, on a happy and wholly unexpected turn in his position (Michael Snowdon comes into possession of wealth), rescued her, but alas! later on Mr. Snowdon curtailed Jane's own desires and natural development for the sake of his project, thus becoming, despite his altruistic designs for the legions of the damned, a tyrant himself to his ward. Big irony, uh? Well, here's another one - this book is so dismal that it dazzles.
Beside Jane's father Joseph, a downright scoundrel, Mrs Peckover and her vulgar daughter Clem, a pair of vengeful scheming harpies, the chief agents of tragedy are abstract forces present within every person, regardless of class, for it is avarice, hatred, envy, ambition, laziness and cowardice that bring about disgrace to the Nether World folk. Moreover, contrary to the Dickensian formula, there is no easy and sudden solution to their troubles, as no angel of salvation appears out of the blue (or the grey, rather, in this case) to deliver comfort to the victims, and precious little retribution against the villains is effected (and that, as mere consequence of their actions, not by divine intervention).
Therefore this work is definitely not recommended to the faint-hearted idealists, but at any rate it might appeal to your sympathy for the oppressed - and I quote Gissing again to clinch my commentary "It is a virtuous world, and our frequent condemnations are invariably based on justice; will it be greatly harmful if for once we temper our righteous judgment with ever so little mercy?" (chapter XXXII).
0 Response to "[X80]≫ Descargar Free The Nether World Timeless Wisdom Collection George Gissing 9781534796522 Books"
Post a Comment