From Middlemarch
An amazing description of “plain” Mary Garth:
Mary Garth, on the contrary, had the aspect of an ordinary sinner: she was brown; her curly dark hair was rough and stubborn; her stature was low; and it would not be true to declare, in satisfactory antithesis, that she had all the virtues. Plainness has its peculiar temptations and vices quite as much as beauty; it apt either to feign amiability, or, not feigning it, to show all the repulsiveness of discontent: at any rate, to be called an ugly thing in contrast with that lovely creature your companion, is apt to produce some effect beyond a sense of fine veracity and fitness in the phrase. At the age of two-and-twenty Mary had certainly not attined that perfect good sense and good principle which are usually recommended to the less fortunate girl, as if they were to be obtained in quantities ready mixed, with a flavor of resignation as required. Her shrewdness had a streak of satiric bitterness continually renewed and never carried utterly out of sight, except by a strong current of gratitude towards those who, instead of telling her that she ought to be contented, did something to make her so. Advancing womanhood had tempered her plainness, which was of a good human sort, such as the mothers of our race have very commonly worn in all latitudes under a more or less becoming headgear. Rembrandt would have painted her with pleasure, and would have made her broad features look out of the canvas with intelligent honesty. For honesty, truth-telling fairness, was Mary’s reigning virtue: she neither tried to create illusions, nor indulged in them for her own behoof, and when she was in a good mood she had humor enough in her to laugh at herself.
Genius character development. It’s out of style now to “describe” a character like that. I think it might have been James Joyce himself who destroyed, in one fell-swoop, that kind of omniscent character development. I have no idea, just a guess. T.S. Eliot was the one who said, after reading Ulysses that Joyce had “killed the 19th century”.
I’m not saying this is either good or bad, or that I prefer one style over the other. Everyone here should know how I feel about James Joyce!!
But I am still finding such intense pleasure in George Eliot’s precise layered character descriptions, like the one above. They’re delicious.
