I think I should tell you something about Miss Evans...

[oursin]

There's a lively debate going on over in academics_anon about how you deal with theoretical perspectives that you don't agree with. Which is being interesting and engaging and raises some significant issues.

However, I have a serious problem with the OP complaining about having to engage with the analyses of godless atheists like Freud or Marx, and wanting to get back to 'moralism and George Eliot'.

Yes, I have made a comment enquiring how they deal with Miss Evans's atheism and adultery.

But how can you read Eliot and miss the point that it's about (among lots of other things, because Eliot is after all a rich and complex writer) finding moral meaning in a universe without a deity and without religion?

And, as far as feminism goes, while Eliot was really, really ambivalent around a number of women's issues, she did throw her support behind several of the major campaigns quite apart from being an exemplar of achieving woman herself. Oh yes, and foregrounding female concerns (the kinds of things that still sometimes get dismissed as petty and trival) in her novels.

The Victorians are not a cozy retreat of the problems of today.

(I am rather proud of this particular comment of mine: ah, the vanity of me!)

Comments

[oursin.livejournal.com]

The whole think reeked of not-remembering-history and thus doomed-to-repeat-it - or possibly just not knowing much about history in the first place, like, e.g. the Victorian tradition of doubt and unbelief; or indeed, the origins of their own 'traditional' system.

Martin Luther: I'm on ur cathedral steps attacking ur traditions..., versions of which could apply to so many religious leaders.