The Crown of Life George Gissing 9781490538983 Books
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The Crown of Life George Gissing 9781490538983 Books
It is unreadable. There are many mysterious punctuation marks and the way it is laid out is terrible!! I would like a refund.Product details
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The Crown of Life George Gissing 9781490538983 Books Reviews
Best-known for "New Grub Street" and "The Odd Women", the Victorian author George Gissing (1857 -- 1903) wrote more than twenty novels during his short life. One of Gissing's neglected works is "The Crown of Life" published in 1899, late in his career. I wanted to visit Gissing again and to reread this novel.
For Gissing and this novel, the "crown of life" is true romantic love. Gissing explores what he often sees and in his wiser moments criticizes as the tension and dichotomy between romantic love and sexuality in many of his books. In "The Crown of Life", romance and idealism appear to win at the end, unlike the result in most of Gissing's books. Gissing wrote the book after two dismal marriages, when he met and fell in love with a woman, Gabrielle Fleury, to whom he could respond on an intellectual as well as physical level. Gabrielle Fleury, had been translating Gissing's books into French. He would remain with Gabrielle for the rest of his life. In a letter, Gissing wrote of his aim in writing this book.
"Under the guise of fiction, this book deals with the most solemn questions of life, and in no light spirit. I have not felt a disagreeable contrast between this work and the sad realities which have fallen upon us. For it has never been my habit to write flippantly, idly. I have never written only to gain money, to please the foolish. And my reward is that -- however poor what I have done -- I do not feel it ignoble."
The book tells of the eight-year courtship by a young man, Piers Otway of a woman named Irene Derwent. Otway is the illegitimate son of a middle-class scholar and former political activist and supporter of liberal positions. When the novel opens, he is a youth of 21, taken with the idea of love, but studying hard to pass the civil service examination for a secure government career. While his is boarding with old friends in the suburbs, he meets a visitor, Irene, and is immediately and inexplicably smitten. Otway is so taken with Irene that he can no longer concentrate on his studies. He gives up the civil service exam and goes into business instead for the Russian office of a large firm. Irene is cool, proper, and polished and from an upper-class background. She flirts mildly with Otway but rebukes him for a minor gaffe during a social affair. The relationship appears to be an end before it begins, particularly because Irene soon makes a promising engagement with a rising young man in Britain's colonial empire. But Otway perseveres in his dreams.
In addition to the developing the story of Piers and Irene, the novel has a political component. Gissing wrote the book after the Russian Tsar, Nicholas II, had proposed a disarmament conference as part of a claimed campaign for world peace. Gissing called "The Crown of Life" his "anti-jingo novel." The book is critical of British imperialism and of the expansion of the British empire under large, unrestrained capitalism. Gissing feared with substantial justification that imperialism would soon lead to war. The anti-jingoism of the book is not fully integrated with the love story. While working is Russia, Piers becomes taken with the Russian peace movement and with individuals living loosely in the manner of Tolstoy. The many characters in the novel discuss and debate British imperialism at length. Several of the characters in the book, including Irene's fiancé and one of her erstwhile suitors, are involved in promoting British colonial interests while one particularly detestable character is involved in arms manufacture. With a limited degree of success, the novel tries to show that the aim of many people in settling for a life of drudgery and for less that full romantic love in the personal lives is tied to the colonialism, impersonality, and warlike tendencies of British late nineteenth-century capitalism.
The strongest scenes of the novel focus on Piers Otway as a lonely young man in both Britain and Russia. Otway must deal with his sexual needs while he dreams of Irene from afar and stumbles through to success in business. He is plagued by his illegitimate birth, by his lack of inheritance, and by scandals involving his two legitimate but wastrel elder brothers. Otway perseveres in his goal of finding true love as the most worthwhile endeavor of life and ultimately succeeds in winning Irene's hand. Ever the realist, Gissing fills his book with pictures of unhappy marriages and of couples who compromise themselves and marry for something less that idealized love. Both Otway and Irene almost succumb to the temptation to compromise at several points during the story.
With many interesting scenes, ideas and passages in the novel, the courtship between Piers and Irene in unconvincing and unappealing. Young Piers is in love with the ideal of love and his lengthy idealization of Irene is forced. In the eight years between meeting Irene and betrothal, Piers does little more physically than touch her hand while dealing otherwise with the demands of sexuality that both Gissing and his protagonist know all-too-well. It is difficult to see what the all-too-prim and perfect Irene does to merit such devotion. Piers' idealization of the young lady does not make her likeable or desirable to the reader. To her credit, Irene develops a sense of individuality during the book as she breaks off with her fiancé upon realizing that his feelings for her verge on the conventional and the superficial. But this is insufficient to support Piers' love and his years of courtship and erotic neglect. The many bad marriages in the book together with some of the minor characters, including a bohemian painter of female nudes, suggest the price of dividing one's sexual from one's idealizing nature for so long. The novel ends in triumph, but it is unclear whether the marriage between Piers and Irene will succeed.
"The Crown of Life" is not one of Gissing's better novels. It is still worth reading and knowing as the work of a beloved and on the whole neglected author. I was glad to revisit and get to know Gissing's work better from the aspect presented in this book. The book is readily accessible online. I can't comment on the available offprint editions. The quotation from Gissing's letters is found at page 308 of Paul Delany's biography, "Gissing a Life",
Robin Friedman
George Gissing was a man with many worldly troubles. Foremost among them was his tendency for calamitous marriages. Towards the end of his too short life, he was lucky and happy to find a stable relationship. This novel was written during that time, near his end.
In Gissing's world view, the 'crown of life' is a relationship based on love. Arranged marriages are not totally rejected, but they are second class affairs. Marriage without the ideal partner is equivalent to defeat. But then, doesn't practical wisdom agree with pop philosophy, as per 'if you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with'? What should be done?
In this novel, a struggling young man sets his mind, quite arbitrarily, on gaining one particular woman's affection. It looks like mission impossible, for social reasons, but he doesn't give up and keeps dreaming and trying for years.
The target woman was a tease when they met, while the man was a spineless nobody. Both were very young, and both are shown to mature very well with the years.
Other social matters play into the plot birth out of wedlock, the scandal of alleged adultery and of divorce. Next to social mores, politics is a main theme. Subjects of the time, like the growth of the British Empire, or Irish Home Rule, are continuously talked about. We are in the years 1886 to 1894. British imperialists are full of 'England über alles' bluster. Or should I call it British Exceptionalism? The good, sensitive people in the story retain an admirable, silent skepticism.
While this is not among Gissing's better known novels, it doesn't deserve to be ignored or forgotten. Though I could find a few minor reasons for dissatisfaction, I enjoyed the book enough for 5 stars. Actually I read the free kindle edition, not this hardcover, but I didn't want my review to be alone...
It is unreadable. There are many mysterious punctuation marks and the way it is laid out is terrible!! I would like a refund.
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