Which George Eliot Heroine Are You?
Everyone needs a good pseudonym handy; you never know when you’ll accidentally write a novel. Anne, Charlotte, and Emily Brontë wrote as Acton, Currer, and Ellis Bell, a sisterly in-joke. Pearl Gray wrote Westerns as Zane Grey, because, Pearl. Charles Dickens sometimes wrote under Boz because he was Dickens and he could. Jane Austen published Sense and Sensibility as “A Lady,” because she predicted this website. And Mary-Ann Evans wrote as George Eliot, because if people would take her more seriously with one dude’s name, how seriously would they take her with two?
So seriously. Too seriously. Virginia Woolf called Middlemarch “one of the few English novels written for grownups.” Are you scared? Don’t be. You can tell Virginia Woolf was lying because real grownups aren’t a thing. There’s plenty in George Eliot for vapid tramps like us. In fact, there’s so much, the real question is where's a vapid tramp to begin? Why don’t we find out whether you’re more like heroine of Middlemarch — Dorothea — or the heroine of Daniel Deronda – Gwendolen (first question, would you rather be named Gwendolen or Dorothea?). That way, you can start with that book and it will feel like you’re just thinking about yourself like normal, but to everyone else, it will look like you're Reading Literature.
The Hairpin’s First Official George Eliot Quiz
1. Solving problems
How do you do it?
(A) Possibly murder.
(B) Just normal waiting for people to die.
2. Bad Choices
Lacking insight into your own character, you end up in a terrible marriage. Which one?
(A) You are spirited and haughty. Also, you are very, very beautiful. You lead a charmed life until you lose all your money in a market crash. You marry into wealth and prestige in order to care for yourself and your mother, for whom you feel genuine love and devotion. Your husband’s interests include crushing your will, isolating you, and having secret families.
(B) You are cerebral, self-denying, and disciplined. Also, you are also very beautiful. You marry a serious older scholar, hoping to learn from him and help him complete his magnum opus. Surprise! His magnum opus is bad and dumb, and he doesn’t actually want you to talk or think. His interests include being old and spindly like Mr. Burns and refusing to teach you Greek.
3. The Boy
You listened to Mindy Kaling and married The Man, and now his doughy, mortgage-paying hands make your flesh crawl. You have imprisoned your desire, but from her cage she shrieks his name: The Boy! Let her caress his stupid floppy rocker hair but once! Who is he?
(A) A solemn but smoldering idealist whom you initially detested, but by the time you come around to liking him he has decided he’s really into being Jewish and isn’t dating outside The Faith. Also he met some girl when she was just about to drown herself, and even your crazy can’t compete with that for his rescuer complex, and also he’s moving to Russia, fuck you.
(B) A rudderless, hungry sort-of-painter: Being with him means abandoning your own work to follow him to. . . it’s not even that clear to you. But! Rufus Sewell plays him in the miniseries, and we all know Rufus Sewell grows up to be Tom Builder.
4. Sports
Which are your favorites?
(A) Riding and archery.
(B) Riding and feeling bad about it.
5. The Freakum Dress
You don’t meet Boys, Men, or twisted fates sitting around your manor in your jammies. What does your Best Dress look like?
(A) Green, shimmering, and serpentine, worn in a casino where you, head held high, bet your last dime rather than admit defeat. . . or poverty. (Except it’s the kind of poverty that happens in these books where people still somehow have like six houses.)
(B) Modest and dark, so that when you are inevitably spotted gazing out a window with the sun hitting you just so, all observers will be struck by how its simple, simple simplicity, so simple only enhances your saintly beauty. Not that you go around looking for sunbeams to practice standing in or anything.
6. Subplots
Life is long. What do you think about when you’re not thinking about boys or gowns?
(A) Proto-Zionism, speculation, the civil war, opera singers, illegitimacy, gambling.
(B) Germ theory, folksy wisdom, The Reform Act, urban planning.
7. Jewelry
“I’m so iced out/I can’t talk to strangers,” Gucci Mane tells us. How do you alienate people using shiny things?
(A) By wearing as penance pieces that whisper to you of abandonment and sadism and rage, that crush your youth and hopes beneath their weight. Also, by using bracelets to try to telegraph desperate secret messages to your just-a-friend and thinking you are subtle, but then everyone is like why are you waving your arm around spastically so much? You are being weeeiiiird.
(B) By undermining your jewel-happy sister about how you really wouldn’t normally do something so frivolous before putting on a single, gleamingly awesome ring and sighing and looking dope.
So what kind of vapid tramp ARE YOU after all?
Mostly As? Gwendolen Grandcourt nee Harleth, from Daniel Deronda.
Favorite Snack: Hearts of Man.
Gaze: Devastating.
Pet Peeve: Scary paintings in boxes.
Theme Song: On A Boat.
Mostly Bs? Dorothea Causabon nee Brooke from Middlemarch.
Favorite Snack: Water, but really.
Gaze: Luminous.
Pet Peeve: Injustice.
Theme Song: This Old Man.
Previously: Mean Ladies to Read About.
Carrie Hill Wilner is a Gwendolen, barely.
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No Maggie Tulliver?
@Sarah Marian Seltzer@twitter That was my first thought!
@Sarah Marian Seltzer@twitter ditto
I refuse to even entertain the idea that I could be Dorothea.
Thank God I'm much more Gwendolen, because Dorothea, ugh. That girl wanted a good shaking, with her white dresses and her "No, I will not have your late wife's boudoir redecorated or take any of my mother's jewelry because I am too high-minded though oh, you know, that ring is pretty sweet and of course I must have a memento of my dear mother". Marrying Mr. Casaubon basically provided that, though.
Also, my great-grandfather's name was Pearl, though he didn't write any Westerns that I know of.
Tom Builder! Pillars of the Earth reference! YES! (Also, I am a Gwendolen, which is far better than being a Samantha.)
@LastMinuteLulu Tom Builder made me want to watch everything Rufus Sewell's ever been in. (Sort of the way Jack made me want to watch everything Eddie Redmayne's ever been in.)
@backstagebethy Eddie Redmayne is one hot ginge.
@LastMinuteLulu I am sooo into Eddie Redmayne. Ahh I'm drooling now just thinking about it.
More proof I'm in the right place – Pillars of the Earth references AND Redwall references.
All B's. Looks like I'm gonna have to start reading some George Eliot.
@backstagebethy I need to start reading George Eliot too, but that's because I was ALL A's. My roommate laughed aloud at my "favorite snack."
…as a girl who's had "You Give Love a Bad Name" dedicated to me three times at the grand old age of 21, I guess I should have expected that…
@backstagebethy also all Bs! (except for the self-denying and disciplined part).
ALERT: Middlemarch is a free book on Google Books. You're welcome.
Who wouldn't rather be Gwendolen? She's like a Gabor sister! Or Elizabeth Taylor in the '80s!
@City_Dater Gwendolen is always the right answer. Have you seen the BBC miniseries? She's incredible in that.
Yay! This was so fun! I've never read either (I'm so unsophisticated aren't I?), so Daniel Deronda it is! I'm so excited to learn more about myself by reading about myself. I'm so super interesting.
@meattubs right?
I dislike Gwendolen so much it took me until Emma to warm up to Romola Garai.
@Lucienne: And how the heck could you not warm up to Romola Garai in Emma? She was like a tall, beautiful, blonde puppy dog that you just wanted to pat on the head and say, "There, there, dear, it's OK."
@Bittersweet: And then be jealous of because she snagged Jonny Lee Miller.
@Bittersweet I thought Jonny Lee Miller was a little young for Mr. Knightley. Jeremy Northam [sigh] will always be my favorite.
@Mame16th: @Mame16th: Agreed, but Gwyneth Paltrow drives me crazy (oh, GOOP) and made Emma too bitchy for my taste. I can always do a Jeremy Northam/Romola Garai version in my head…
@Bittersweet I love Emma anyway and that production was FLAWLESS. So now Romola Garai and I are good.
Gwendolen and I, on the other hand …
Rebecca Mead's big amazing piece on GE is subscriber-only, but I love this bit from the Q&A:
REBECCA MEAD: You know, I know what you mean. There is the suggestion, at the end of the book, that Dorothea could not become another Saint Theresa because her social conditions did not permit it. On the other hand, I am very moved by Dorothea’s insistence, several times in the book, that she might have done more if she had been better, or had known more-it rings so very true. I think it was an incredibly bold move on the part of GE to establish a heroine who doesn’t triumph, but simply lives a good (which is to say loving, connected) life. The pathos of Dorothea’s lack of triumph is a huge part of the power of the book. When I finish reading Middlemarch I don’t have that sense of satisfaction that I do when the ends are neatly tied, in Jane Austen, for example. I have a sense of the enormous challenge of living a good life, the ever-present possibility of making mistakes. That to me is where the greatness of the book lies.
Read more http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/ask/2011/02/rebecca-mead-george-eliot-middlemarch.html#ixzz1a1Y9Z04i
@Nicole Cliffe Yes to all of this.
@Nicole Cliffe I would like to register, officially, that I think Dorothea is so compelling and complicated it makes me uneasy. I mean, she's also basically a teenager when the book begins–maybe she is 20? I think it actually mentions her age–and she's so young, full of conviction and presumed self-knowledge and there's some laughs at her intensity and naivete but if we didn't admire it in some way, her marriage to Causabon would not be quite so sickening, we'd be like hahaha that'll teach her. But we're not, or I'm not at least. I think Causabon is evil. I find him so much worse than Grandcourt, fwiw. Anyway, I have THOUGHTS, but one of them is that early Dorothea is not so easy to dismiss as silly and self-righteous when you remember how young she is. Or maybe everyone here was perfect, wise teenagers, I dunno.
@Carrie Hill Wilner That's a good point about Casaubon and Grandcourt. At least Grandcourt never pretended to be wise and virtuous. But there's something I find particularly irritating about Dorothea's brand of self-righteousness and idealism.
@Carrie Hill Wilner I'm with Carrie on this one. I dislike the saint-like attributes that other people give her, in part, because I think it makes her love-affair with Ladislaw less believable, but also in part because if I were to meet anyone like that today, I might be annoyed. However, as Carrie said, she is really young and is rather ignorant of…everything. The fact that none of her plans ever come to fruition (by her own admission) is quite telling. She's not even aware that what she feels for Ladislaw is love until close to the end. And, she's still young, by the book's end.
I have similar feelings towards Rosamond. She's easy to dismiss as an incredibly self-centered and profligate woman, yet she was raised to expect very specific things from marriage and to behave in a very certain way as a married woman. Certainly she made the decision to marry Lydgate, who was unsuitable, but the fact that she's caught in a marriage that doesn't meet her supposed expectations is sad, really. Ditto for Dodo's marriage to Casaubon – she had no idea what she was getting into, and can we blame her? God forbid I married whoever I was dating then.
@Mame16th I also realize I am sort of reasoning backwards from intuition–the descriptions of the Causabon marriage, well, I can't think of anything else I've read that got me feeling so trapped and panicky. And if I _really_ didn't get Dorothea wouldn't I be like, she got exactly the marriage she deserved; she made the exact mistake we could have predicted her making? I am not above some So I know I link into her character somehow, the youth thing is one theory.
Also, I love misunderstood, spiritually pure moor-wandering ladies, Jane, Tess, Cathy, etc. and Dorothea's sort of explodes that Special Girl fantasy, because hey, she still has to live in a town, and like, deal with life, and ends up in a terrible situation because she wants to be a Special Girl and that's not a real thing. Which is maybe why this book is "for grownups"? "Cathy Earnshaw Goes To The Dentist and Forgets To Send The Rent."
@Carrie Hill Wilner Yes, the part where Casaubon has the attack or whatever in the middle of the night horrified me because I realized, "Oh my God, that poor girl, she actually has to share a bed with him!" I had really hoped it would have been a pure, spiritual sort of marriage with separate bedrooms, and it was upsetting to find out it wasn't.
@Nicole Cliffe Yes, I've always thought the genius of Middlemarch is that it is about the necessary compromises we make in life; about how to live a good life by holding on to one or two of our best ambitions by letting go or rejecting some of the other ones. I find Lydgate's story just as compelling as Dorothea's, partly because achievement was more within the realm of possibility for the him. I suppose as a character, Dorothea's arc was always going to be about learning to live with herself, no matter what else she could have accomplished.
@Nicole Cliffe Ignore my previous comment, unless you want to read it in a hilariously pompous voice. Ugh, did not mean it to sound like that.
@Melusina Whatevs, dude, that comment is awesome. It's so true … and it makes me want to cry, just a bit. I always thought that that genius of Middlemarch which you describe just adds a side of happy to its Overwhelming Tragedy. But maybe that's my inner teen rearing her emo head.
@Logos Aww, thanks. I think George Eliot had an inner emo teen too.
Also, I love this piece (Carrie's!) so much I can't handle it.
@Nicole Cliffe IT LOVES YOU TOO.
@Carrie Hill Wilner And how much do I love that Gwendolyn's theme song is "I'm on a Boat" ??! I'm picture her, now, all blinged out, to rocking it like a Polaroid feature: I'm on a Boat, MotherFUCKER! Woo-hooooo! ("I'm on a boat, and / it's goin' fast, and / I got a manslaughter-themed Pashmina Afghan …"
This quiz tells me I'm Dorothea, but maybe more like Celia? Or Mary, minus all the plainness? I haven't read Daniel Deronda, so I don't know nothin' about those characters.
I am so ecstatic about this. You are in my brain, my life!
I already know that I am Dorothea, because…Ladislaw. Rufus Sewell as Ladislaw. Those-last-couple-chapters-in-Middlemarch, Ladislaw.
Okay "Middlemarch" has been sitting on my bookshelf for YEARS and the first chapter has been read eleventy-three times. It's so heavy and large! But perhaps this quiz is a gentle reminder that heavy books are people too. And perhaps I will give it another go.
@clezy I too read the first chapter of Middlemarch approximately 100 times before I finally succeeded in reading the rest of the book! But when I finally did, it was sooo good, and now I love me some Middlemarch!
My copy of Middlemarch is so pretty that I don't want to mess it up. So now I think I will by a "reading copy" and actually read it…
@m.cat also, you can skip the long parts about 19th c. English redistricting politics etc. Seriously, unless you are a super nerd for that stuff and want to read up on it beforehand, just skip. It won't make sense. And that will make the book 20% shorter, minimum.
I don't need to take this quiz. I am Mary Garth, FORVER.
@Umlauts Yeah, she's the bees knees.
@Umlauts I was going to say, Where is the love for Mary Garth. A totally awesome woman with a whole lot of courage to boot.
@Umlauts I feel like I'm alone on this, but Mary Garth's self-righteousness always annoyed me: denying a dying man his last request (and thereby stiffing Fred), marrying Fred even though she knows she's so superior.
@LooseBaggyMonster I never saw any of that as her being self-righteous. I'll admit that the scene with the dying Mr. Featherstone makes me uncomfortable – I always wondered what was so wrong about denying him another change to his will. Knowing that she stiffs Fred makes that worse. But, had that not happened, Fred might have got the property and continued to lose money by gambling it away, in the process losing Mary. And, I don't think she thinks she's superior. He's really the socially superior one.
@marchaeo Yes, Fred is socially superior (in the Vincys' eyes and in fashionable circles) but the Garth family disapproves of him, and there's the scene where Mary realizes she could have had Mr. Farebrother, and he's oh so wonderful, but she has a duty to look after poor Fred.
@Umlauts I'm only halfway through at the moment – I got to the funeral and metaphorically put the book in the freezer because BAD THINGS ARE GOING TO HAPPEN – but I am definitely Mary. In fact, I have had several people independently tell me so. I love how snarky she is to Rosamund, who doesn't even notice.
@LooseBaggyMonster Well Fred did end up putting the Garth family into greater debt with his gambling/poor financial choices. Fred was totally coddled and got away with all kinds of nonsense. Mary did love him but she knew that until he got his act together in a genuine way (and not just taking the first thing that came along) he would always be weak in one respect or another.
I think it took a lot of bravery on her part to hold back even if she did love Fred.
@ all – word on Mary Garth's integrity. Except – EXCEPT, if I were Mary Garth … hell, I AM Mary Garth! And I am totally taking Mr. Farebrother and shagging him rotten in the pulpit as a mid-week pick-me-up between lovely long walks with and hilarious teas with his bevy of female relatives. Farebrother FTW!
I never really knew how to characterise myself very well until now.
Inner monologue: "Crazy bitch? Hmmm, no, a little crazy, a little bitchy, but not overwhelming. Triflin' ho? No, again, a little from column A AND B, but I'm not sold yet….wait, what? Vapid tramp you say? I …YES! Sistren, vapid in acts of trampery, let me join you!!!!"
I almost shed a tear. Thank you.
@LolaLaBalc This is validating, as I was also considering "sulky tart."
More of these articles please! Maybe we could do one every week? Every day? I love this so hard.
Sincerely,
Gwendolen (even though Middlemarch is way better)
"But why always Dorothea?" Even Eliot questioned fixation on that particular (exasperating but lovable) heroine. What about Mary Garth, Rosamund Vincy in that same novel (as if anyone would admit to being a Rosamund). Or Romola, Eppie, and Maggie Tulliver!?
@LooseBaggyMonster I second that – we need way more options!
@marchaeo Oh, and Celia Brooke! So overlooked, but so sensible, and she calls Dorothea "Dodo"!
@LooseBaggyMonster Any takers for Mrs. Bulstrode or Cadwallader?
@marchaeo Yes! That's the great thing about Eliot, her attention to the psychological intricacies and small heroisms of the "minor" character. The Mrs. Bulstrode section makes me cry.
@LooseBaggyMonster We've all had a Rosamund in our lives at one time or another.
@LooseBaggyMonster Yes, it's particularly upsetting because that's one of the few occasions where we really get a glimpse of her character.
And Mrs. C., frankly, is hilarious. I need someone in my life like that whom I can have over for tea so that we can gossip. And then later gossip about me to others.
@Miss Zarves That bitch! Though I feel bad for her. And Lydgate. Ugh, those two were so depressing.
@LooseBaggyMonster @marchaeo I think Celia is one of the most instantly lovable characters in all of spacetime. All, "whaaaaaaaatever Dodo, be that way, don't take the jewelry, more for me." I just worry about anyone so fundamentally incapable of really fucking up. CELIA, IS EVERYTHING OK?
@Carrie Hill Wilner I am definitely Mary, but I wish that I was Celia. She is the greatest.
Come to think of it, my bff is probably a Celia.
Apparently I am Dorothea, which must be life canon since I already dated a guy named….LADISLAV. Coincidence??? I THINK NOT. Dun dun dun.
@The Lady of Shalott A Ladislav was the real-life inspiration for Laurie in Little Women too!
I think I'm Maggie Tulliver, but I always had a weird soft spot for Hetty Sorrel, even though I acknowledge that she is definitely one of The Worse.
@annepersand I too have a soft spot for Hetty Sorrel. I think I wrote a paper on her and Tess (of the D'urbervilles, who I also kind of love) and the victimization of women in Victorian literature.
@phlox Me too! Actually every time I re-read Tess, I like her more and more. The first time I read it, I was like WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS WOMAN. Now I am just like, why is she saddled with useless stupid men constantly?
@annepersand I know! So many terrible men. Even Angel, really, because a. stupid name and b. she was raped! You do not get to hold that against her, even in the 1890s.
@phlox Seriously, why couldn't she stab ALL the men??? Maybe when Tarantino does an adaptation, that'll happen?
@Lucienne That would be amazing.
@phlox Fucking Angel. There are no words. SET HIM ON FIRE.
@pterodactgirl Fucking word word woorrrrrrrd, BURN ANGEL BURN. And also: FUCK YOU ANGEL, except NOT, because you cockblocked Tess on her OWN WEDDING NIGHT, even though it was your own god damned hypocritical cock.
… sorry. He brings out all my rage. Now to go drool over Adam Bede some more.
I don't know which one I am, I just want to know where my Sir James Chettam is.
@Miss Zarves Agree! He seemed like such a nice, uncomplicated, outdoorsy sort of fellow.
Any mention of Rufus Sewell makes my underpanties disintegrate in a puff of smoke that smells like cigars, frock coats, and marrying out of my social class to the smoldering, Italian-born artist cousin of my ancient crusty thankfully dead husband.
So, I guess I'm Dorothea, minus the noble character and iron clad morality.
WHEN WILL THERE BE MORE COSTUME DRAMA DISCUSSION?!?! And does anyone in NYC want to do some kind of marathon viewing in Brooklyn? I need friends and I have every Jane Eyre ever made, plus Stage Beauty, Dangerous Beauty, Lost in Austen, two versions of Persuasion…the list is embarrassing, and so is my stinky desperation for lady-friends. Luring y'all to my apartment with the promise of corsets and penetrating observations of 19th century middle class morality…
@KatPruska Last year I hosted a "Pancakes and Petticoats" party where everyone got together for brunch and a BBC costume drama marathon. It worked! Even folks who aren't into corsets'n'class got caught up in the excitement of the railroad coming to town.
@KatPruska Costume drama marathon in Brooklyn? I am there with bells on. Also cake and wine.
@KatPruska Yes to the viewing party! And the wine mentioned by @annepersand.
@dudavocado omg you have the best name.
also, I would totally come to a marathon costume drama viewing party in Brooklyn, if it wouldn't be creepy in that you all hardly know me.
@KatPruska omg, yo, if anything there needs to be a viewing of the most recent Jane Eyre, just to groan over the plot points left out AND to DROOL over Michael FASSBENDER, oh hells yes I said it.
Dorothea is one of my favorite characters in literature, although I'm pleased and frightened to have answered B on every question.
Which George Eliot book is Gwendolyn from? Because I have definitely not read that one.
Wish this awesome quiz had come out when our book group was reading MIDDLEMARCH this summer. See our thoughts here. Will now have to push the group to read DANIEL DERONDA next year.
This thread makes me so nostalgic for my days as an earnest undergrad literature major. If only it were possible to have a group discussion about George Eliot every morning.
@dudavocado "Be the change you wish to see in the world," –Mahatma Ghandi, surprisingly also talking about how he wished he could talk about English novels more! Isn't that weird?
What fun. In 1960, I delivered a paper on Middlemarch at the Minnesota English Majors symposium and I hadn't given it a thought since until this article came along. I flunked the test, by the way. Makes me want to go back and reread the book. Thanks.
I can't get enough of this.
Both Daniel Deronda and Middlemarch are free for Kindle right now, if anyone besides me is feeling woefully undereducated!
When I was younger, I spent a great deal of time trying to come up w/ the perfect nom de plume for myself…waaaaay more effort than I put into to any actual pieces of writing.
Since I've just discovered I'm a Gwendolen (but only b/c there isn't a Maggie option!), I guess I'll have to incorporate that somehow…
I hate to…no I don't. Zane Grey was a dude. A dentist dude married to a lady. He had many mistresses. His wife copy-edited his books. So.
@Hiroine Protagonist Yup, a dude, named Pearl Gray. Who wrote under–and maybe used generally, I dunno, we didn't hang out–his middle name, um, Zane, and changed the spelling of his last name. So.
@Carrie Hill Wilner Ohhhh – you were just saying pseudonyms, not ladies writing under dudes' names. I understand now. I think.
Oy, re-reading that, I don't know how I made such a mistake. Blame the wine?
This post is so spot on, I would bake it cookies, and I never bake. My fav is 4 B) Riding and feeling bad about it.
The first time I read Middlemarch, years ago, I was a very idealistic teenager, and I genuinely identified with quite a few aspects of Dorothea's stupidity, without seeing all the ways that Eliot is gently poking fun at her. (I also thought the 'You're an expatriate. You've lost touch with the soil' speech from The Sun Also Rises was meant seriously.)
When I went to Rome for the first time this year, I somehow managed to resist the temptation to strike pensive poses in deserted rooms of statuary (NB: go in January). I guess I've grown up.
@Melusina – yesssss, on the reading 'Middlemarch' while young and teenager-y idealistic. I SOBBED when Dorothea realized she was 'trapped' by Causabon – and only later did I want to tap her on the head and say: Sweetie. Ditch the capitals of Asia (or whatever she's reading in that atlas towards the end.)
And you know what? What NEEDED to happen is: Dorothea marries Lydgate, and they have a big-ass hospital for the indigent and INVENT CELL BIOLOGY. The end!! But noooo, George Eliot has to be all Grimly Realistic These Small Country Towns Will Suck Out Your Life Blood (And No, Not That Kind Of Suck, Rosamund You Skank.)
@Logos Hehehe, they absolutely need to singlehandedly cure the sick by inventing cell biology together. They probably would have got on each other's nerves like all the time though.