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Richard Feverel #1-6
The Ordeal of Richard Feverel
Of all nineteenth-century English novels, " claims Edward Mendelson in his Introduction to this edition, "The Ordeal of Richard Feverel is the most self-consciously literary in its style and structure and the most sexually explicit in its plot and theme." First published in 1859, Meredith's first and most controversial novel concerns Sir Austin Feverel's misconceived attempts to educate his son Richard according to a system of his own devising - a system based on theories of sexual restraint. Exploring generational and gender conflicts, the psychology of sexual jealousy and repression, and myths of Eden and Utopia, The Ordeal of Richard Feverel shocked Victorian readers but gained for itself a cult following. "Now that it has been freed from its reputation, " writes Mendelson, "readers can discover again the tragic and ironic force, and the psychological and formal complexity that make The Ordeal of Richard Feverel one of the most profound, subtle, and moving works of English fiction.
560 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1859
About the author
George Meredith
1,446 books82 followersGeorge Meredith of Britain wrote novels, such as
The Ordeal of Richard Feverel
(1859), and poetic works, including
Modern Love
(1862).
During the Victorian era, Meredith read law, and people articled him as a solicitor, but shortly after marrying Mary Ellen Nicolls, a 30-year-old widowed daughter of Thomas Love Peacock, in 1849 at 21 years of age, he abandoned that profession for journalism.
He collected his early writings, first published in periodicals, into Poems, which was published to some acclaim in 1851. His wife left him and their five-year old son in 1858; she died three years later. Her departure was the inspiration for The Ordeal of Richard Feverel (1859), his first "major novel." It was considered a breakthrough novel, but its sexual frankness caused a scandal and prevented it from being widely read.
As an advisor to publishers, Meredith is credited with helping Thomas Hardy start his literary career, and was an early associate of J. M. Barrie. Before his death, Meredith was honored from many quarters: he succeeded Lord Tennyson as president of the Society of Authors; in 1905 he was appointed to the Order of Merit by King Edward VII.
His works include: The Shaving of Shagpat (1856), Farina (1857), Vittoria (1867) and The Egoist (1879). The Egoist is one of his most enduring works.
Librarian note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
George^Meredith
During the Victorian era, Meredith read law, and people articled him as a solicitor, but shortly after marrying Mary Ellen Nicolls, a 30-year-old widowed daughter of Thomas Love Peacock, in 1849 at 21 years of age, he abandoned that profession for journalism.
He collected his early writings, first published in periodicals, into Poems, which was published to some acclaim in 1851. His wife left him and their five-year old son in 1858; she died three years later. Her departure was the inspiration for The Ordeal of Richard Feverel (1859), his first "major novel." It was considered a breakthrough novel, but its sexual frankness caused a scandal and prevented it from being widely read.
As an advisor to publishers, Meredith is credited with helping Thomas Hardy start his literary career, and was an early associate of J. M. Barrie. Before his death, Meredith was honored from many quarters: he succeeded Lord Tennyson as president of the Society of Authors; in 1905 he was appointed to the Order of Merit by King Edward VII.
His works include: The Shaving of Shagpat (1856), Farina (1857), Vittoria (1867) and The Egoist (1879). The Egoist is one of his most enduring works.
Librarian note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
George^Meredith
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 33 reviews
May 10, 2020
I think this book would appeal to those who read 19th-century fiction, but who'd also enjoy some modernity to go along with it. Just when you think Meredith is writing a stock 19th-century character or a 'typical' plot line, he turns it on its head. Honor, romantic notions, and pride are skewered. The only characters with any common sense who actually get things done are an earthy landlady and a nephew of Lord Feverel, one who's married a housemaid and actually works at something useful.
There is humor, mostly of the ironical kind, and tragedy, also ironic. The tone changes as we get to the last chapter, which is narrated by one of the characters (a bland character who has become quite emotional) instead of the detached narrator whose disembodied voice previously dominated in various ways. I don't believe I've read anything like this book before as far as 19th-c literature goes.
In later revisions to this book, Meredith took out the first four chapters, another chapter about Sir Feverel visiting a Mrs Grandison and her daughters as he searches for a wife for his son (one that will fit his System), and some of the dialogue spoken by the landlady and another nephew, Adrian, the "Wise Youth." I'm glad I read this edition with the restored cuts: otherwise, I would've missed out on some of the funniest bits.
There is humor, mostly of the ironical kind, and tragedy, also ironic. The tone changes as we get to the last chapter, which is narrated by one of the characters (a bland character who has become quite emotional) instead of the detached narrator whose disembodied voice previously dominated in various ways. I don't believe I've read anything like this book before as far as 19th-c literature goes.
In later revisions to this book, Meredith took out the first four chapters, another chapter about Sir Feverel visiting a Mrs Grandison and her daughters as he searches for a wife for his son (one that will fit his System), and some of the dialogue spoken by the landlady and another nephew, Adrian, the "Wise Youth." I'm glad I read this edition with the restored cuts: otherwise, I would've missed out on some of the funniest bits.
January 14, 2023
“My father has some sort of System with me, it appears, and when I came to town the time before, he took me to some people—the Grandisons—and what do you think? one of the daughters is a little girl—a nice little thing enough very funny—and he wants me to wait for her! He hasn't said so, but I know it. I know what he means. Nobody understands him but me. I know he loves me, and is one of the best of men—but just consider!—a little girl who just comes up to my elbow. Isn't it ridiculous? Did you ever hear such nonsense?”
This book is a story of a somewhat lamentable history , centering around a 19th century British family of wealth and honour, chiefly orbiting on the relationship between a father, Sir Austin, a baronet, and his son Richard and how their lives unfold during a certain time span, till a quite predictable end .
Early in his son’s childhood, Sir Austin decided that Richard was neither to go to school, nor to college and maintained that the young lad should be kept under parental vigilance thanks to his system of education for his son, which system is in full disclosed under the narrative flow.
I guess is no surprise that the promise of the family, that is young Richard, will never come to its blossoming fulfillment, considering the many hard blows that struck him in only couple of years. Poor boy! He was fully at the mercy of science , and not of Gods, that might have possibly favoured him with some better fate, though that’s no guarantee as well, but it’s always good to hope :)
There is not much plot in the narrative as for whole story, but there are plenty of family plots raging in the characters’ brains, and this offers a lot of very funny, amusing dialogues that made me screw up my eyes, in other words provoked a loud peal of laughter, time and again :D
Yet, despite my amusement, by the closing of the book, I have felt that oh, how I am sick of theories, and Systems, and especially the pretensions of humans, so yes, I would rather get more pleasure from commonplace unpretending people! Sir Austin, who is called by the narrative voice as a ‘Scientific Humanist’ proved that he must have little of the human in him. The book is lengthy but is totally worthy of read, so I would gladly recommend it, especially because it poses a very interesting dilemma when it’s about relationships, and especially between parents and children: on which should the accusation fall – on science, or on human nature? when these relationships are completely altering the humans, during their interactions.
This book is a story of a somewhat lamentable history , centering around a 19th century British family of wealth and honour, chiefly orbiting on the relationship between a father, Sir Austin, a baronet, and his son Richard and how their lives unfold during a certain time span, till a quite predictable end .
Early in his son’s childhood, Sir Austin decided that Richard was neither to go to school, nor to college and maintained that the young lad should be kept under parental vigilance thanks to his system of education for his son, which system is in full disclosed under the narrative flow.
I guess is no surprise that the promise of the family, that is young Richard, will never come to its blossoming fulfillment, considering the many hard blows that struck him in only couple of years. Poor boy! He was fully at the mercy of science , and not of Gods, that might have possibly favoured him with some better fate, though that’s no guarantee as well, but it’s always good to hope :)
There is not much plot in the narrative as for whole story, but there are plenty of family plots raging in the characters’ brains, and this offers a lot of very funny, amusing dialogues that made me screw up my eyes, in other words provoked a loud peal of laughter, time and again :D
Yet, despite my amusement, by the closing of the book, I have felt that oh, how I am sick of theories, and Systems, and especially the pretensions of humans, so yes, I would rather get more pleasure from commonplace unpretending people! Sir Austin, who is called by the narrative voice as a ‘Scientific Humanist’ proved that he must have little of the human in him. The book is lengthy but is totally worthy of read, so I would gladly recommend it, especially because it poses a very interesting dilemma when it’s about relationships, and especially between parents and children: on which should the accusation fall – on science, or on human nature? when these relationships are completely altering the humans, during their interactions.
December 23, 2022
Maybe 3.5. I have mixed feelings on this one. The beginning was a little slow and the last chapter felt abrupt, but there were some absolutely fantastic moments and characters here.
May 22, 2010
Some books are simply impossible to pigeonhole, although sensational, psychological, socially critical Bildungsroman pretty much covers the waterfront of The Ordeal of Richard Feverel: A History of a Father and Son. George Meredith’s most successful early novel is this exquisite dissection of the smug, self-important Victorian propertied classes. The running gag in the book is a series of fatuous aphorisms nicely mirroring the mindless culture that tries to run its life by slogans.
The surprise comes at the end of the book. In his last year as a minor, Richard encounters adultery, cross-dressing, seduction, elopement, a planned abduction, a duel, and deaths. His “ordeal” makes most sensational novels look like nursery rhymes. All the leisurely descriptions of earlier chapters are gone.
At the start of the book, Richard is fourteen, the only son of a rich single father, who has nurtured him the way other monomaniacs nurture prize marrows. When Richard, like Tom Brown, goes off the rails, Daddy’s Money is there to bail out his precious boy. Fast-forward five years and Tom Brown morphs into Hamlet. By turns, melancholy, amorous, rebellious and sullen, it takes the entire family rushing around to keep him out of trouble. Richard is like a spoiled oriental prince nobody dare cross.
The rake’s progress has to end in tears, but while Tom Brown turns into a living saint and Hamlet dies nobly, Richard does neither. After trying out whatever an amoral young man with no responsibilities and a good income can think of, we can reasonably expect a trite ending, and we would be wrong.
The surprise comes at the end of the book. In his last year as a minor, Richard encounters adultery, cross-dressing, seduction, elopement, a planned abduction, a duel, and deaths. His “ordeal” makes most sensational novels look like nursery rhymes. All the leisurely descriptions of earlier chapters are gone.
At the start of the book, Richard is fourteen, the only son of a rich single father, who has nurtured him the way other monomaniacs nurture prize marrows. When Richard, like Tom Brown, goes off the rails, Daddy’s Money is there to bail out his precious boy. Fast-forward five years and Tom Brown morphs into Hamlet. By turns, melancholy, amorous, rebellious and sullen, it takes the entire family rushing around to keep him out of trouble. Richard is like a spoiled oriental prince nobody dare cross.
The rake’s progress has to end in tears, but while Tom Brown turns into a living saint and Hamlet dies nobly, Richard does neither. After trying out whatever an amoral young man with no responsibilities and a good income can think of, we can reasonably expect a trite ending, and we would be wrong.
A monomaniac at large, watching over sane people in slumber! thinks Adrian Harley, as he hears Sir Austin's footfall, and truly that was a strange object to see. – The Ordeal of Richard Feverel, George Meredith (1859)
March 27, 2011
If you enjoy 19th century irony as I do, you will enjoy The Ordeal of Richard Feverel (1859) immensely! This novel was a recent choice by the Yahoo 19th Century Lit group, and I don’t know why it isn’t more widely read by lovers of the classics because much of it is hilarious.
The ordeal that young Richard must endure is the System of Education devised for him by his father, Sir Austin Feverel. His plan is that the boy should grow up happy and self-confident by being secluded from all pernicious influences, especially school and females. He does not, to put it mildly, have very realistic ideas about his child, and he ‘s not a very good judge of character.
For Sir Austin has cast aside his faithless wife and is bringing up the boy himself, with only the companionship of some hangers-on at the Estate. There is a Cousin Austin Wentworth who disgraced the family name by marrying a housemaid, and a cynical Cousin Adrian Harley, an Epicurean who flunked out of Curate school and has been given a ‘stipendiary post’ at Sir Austin’s so that he can loaf about in a more respectable way.
For the rest of my review please visit http://anzlitlovers.wordpress.com/201... but beware: there are some spoilers there.
The ordeal that young Richard must endure is the System of Education devised for him by his father, Sir Austin Feverel. His plan is that the boy should grow up happy and self-confident by being secluded from all pernicious influences, especially school and females. He does not, to put it mildly, have very realistic ideas about his child, and he ‘s not a very good judge of character.
For Sir Austin has cast aside his faithless wife and is bringing up the boy himself, with only the companionship of some hangers-on at the Estate. There is a Cousin Austin Wentworth who disgraced the family name by marrying a housemaid, and a cynical Cousin Adrian Harley, an Epicurean who flunked out of Curate school and has been given a ‘stipendiary post’ at Sir Austin’s so that he can loaf about in a more respectable way.
For the rest of my review please visit http://anzlitlovers.wordpress.com/201... but beware: there are some spoilers there.
December 9, 2020
'An Age of betty tit for tat,
An Age of busy gabble:
An Age that's like a brewer's vat,
Fermenting for the rabble!
'An Age that's chaste in Love, but lax
To virtuous abuses:
Whose gentlemen and ladies wax
Too dainty for their uses.
'An Age that drives an Iron Horse,
Of Time and Space defiant;
Exulting in a Giant's Force,
And trembling at the Giant.
'An Age of Quaker hue and cut,
By Mammon misbegotten;
See the mad Hamlet mouth and strut!
And mark the Kings of Cotton!
'From this unrest, lo, early wreck'd,
A Future staggers crazy,
Ophelia of the Ages, deck'd
With woeful weed and daisy!'
An Age of busy gabble:
An Age that's like a brewer's vat,
Fermenting for the rabble!
'An Age that's chaste in Love, but lax
To virtuous abuses:
Whose gentlemen and ladies wax
Too dainty for their uses.
'An Age that drives an Iron Horse,
Of Time and Space defiant;
Exulting in a Giant's Force,
And trembling at the Giant.
'An Age of Quaker hue and cut,
By Mammon misbegotten;
See the mad Hamlet mouth and strut!
And mark the Kings of Cotton!
'From this unrest, lo, early wreck'd,
A Future staggers crazy,
Ophelia of the Ages, deck'd
With woeful weed and daisy!'
February 11, 2017
This was my most enjoyable experience of classic literature in some time. I'm amazed at how Meredith wrote such unapologetically glowing prose that manages to be fanciful while still presenting a realistic, believable story. He imbues every line with wit and grace, and most importantly, a healthy sense of humanity. He can be comical without devolving into mockery; where he instructs, he avoids being didactic; and when he is critical, he does it without scorn. This, perhaps above all, is what I love about Meredith. This is a human story, told sympathetically, and for that, I found it very satisfying.
January 23, 2019
The Ordeal of Richard Feverel is a Victorian bildungsroman that follows the early life of an heir raised and educated according to a "System" of his father's devising. When I heard about the book, it was described as a philosophical novel, and it is so in the best sense: the characters are motivated by certain ideas, and the novel explores what the fruit of those ideas is. (The alternative is that the author holds certain ideas, and clumsily manipulates his characters in inhuman figures, to pantomime support for his positions.)
What is strange is that we never really learn a great deal about what this System comprises. In practical terms, it doesn't amount to much more than an attempt to expose the pupil to good example, and exclude him from bad example. But what is essential to it is that a person is controllable, and that with the right management, can transcend typical human nature. As a result, the System represents grand Victorian pseudosciences in general, and the vanity of attempting to understand and control a person.
What felt very Victorian to me is that way in which particular characters correspond to different ideas, and a nuanced exploration of those ideas is achieved by their successes and failures. The author's own position is revealed in the triangulation of these. The father fails, since nature is too great to be understood or controlled by a system; and a system is too great for mere nature to attain to. Yet the opposite of a System is not educated cynicism: the uncle's hedonism works nothing but harm. Nor is the solution a Romantic exaltation of Passion or Nature, which aims pridefully for the transcendent, and hence works no good to human flourishing. In the end, the conclusion seems to be a Tolstoyan elevation of the simple religious goodness of the peasant, a natural human kindness undisturbed by education.
The critique of Victorian theorising is well made, and the exposure of the impotence and cruelty of such systems when brought into contact with the human heart is the major strength of the novel. Yet its length means this material is exhausted, and much of TOORF is mere moral fable, seeking to instruct by showing the result of actions rather than ideas. Since the characters depend on their ideas, this sucked out their depth and made them uninteresting.
This is exacerbated by the fact that the writing is strangely mixed. Some sections are glorious, but they fall between slow deserts. Meredith writes best when describing the young, managing to capture the virtue of high spirits and keenly felt emotions, whilst holding them at a certain knowing remove with wry - even parodic - writing. Yet as the comedy develops into a tragedy, this charm is withdrawn, and I found much of the book a slog.
TOORF contains an interesting novel, exploring the cruelty and vanity of trying to control the human heart. But this is swamped by long periods with little of interest in terms of ideas, character or writing.
What is strange is that we never really learn a great deal about what this System comprises. In practical terms, it doesn't amount to much more than an attempt to expose the pupil to good example, and exclude him from bad example. But what is essential to it is that a person is controllable, and that with the right management, can transcend typical human nature. As a result, the System represents grand Victorian pseudosciences in general, and the vanity of attempting to understand and control a person.
What felt very Victorian to me is that way in which particular characters correspond to different ideas, and a nuanced exploration of those ideas is achieved by their successes and failures. The author's own position is revealed in the triangulation of these. The father fails, since nature is too great to be understood or controlled by a system; and a system is too great for mere nature to attain to. Yet the opposite of a System is not educated cynicism: the uncle's hedonism works nothing but harm. Nor is the solution a Romantic exaltation of Passion or Nature, which aims pridefully for the transcendent, and hence works no good to human flourishing. In the end, the conclusion seems to be a Tolstoyan elevation of the simple religious goodness of the peasant, a natural human kindness undisturbed by education.
The critique of Victorian theorising is well made, and the exposure of the impotence and cruelty of such systems when brought into contact with the human heart is the major strength of the novel. Yet its length means this material is exhausted, and much of TOORF is mere moral fable, seeking to instruct by showing the result of actions rather than ideas. Since the characters depend on their ideas, this sucked out their depth and made them uninteresting.
This is exacerbated by the fact that the writing is strangely mixed. Some sections are glorious, but they fall between slow deserts. Meredith writes best when describing the young, managing to capture the virtue of high spirits and keenly felt emotions, whilst holding them at a certain knowing remove with wry - even parodic - writing. Yet as the comedy develops into a tragedy, this charm is withdrawn, and I found much of the book a slog.
TOORF contains an interesting novel, exploring the cruelty and vanity of trying to control the human heart. But this is swamped by long periods with little of interest in terms of ideas, character or writing.
January 19, 2023
Parts of this were very funny! (Though I don't recommend this to anyone I know)
Plot summary for anyone curious: Sir Austin Feverel’s wife runs off with his best friend. Sir Austin is left behind at Rayhnham Abbey with his son Richard. Richard gets in a scrape with a local farmer. When Richard goes to apologize, he meets the farmer’s niece, Lucy Desborough. When Richard is 18, his father travels to London to seek an appropriate bride for his son. Meanwhile, Richard meets Lucy again and falls in love. The spark of love threatens to explode the strict “System” of education that Sir Austin insists upon for his son. Richard marries Lucy and they head off for the Isle of Wight. On the Isle of Wight, Richard and Lucy fall under the bad influence of Lady Judith and Lord Mountfalcon. Richard decides to leave his wife on the Isle of Wight and travel to London to meet his father. Richard waits 5 weeks in London and still his father does not come to meet him. In the meantime, he goes to a dinner at Richmond where a beautiful Mrs. Mount flirts with him. Meanwhile, Lord Mountfalcon has stayed on the Isle of Wight (even though the season is rainy and windy) because he loves Lucy. He is about to declare his love for Lucy when the servant Mrs. Bessy Berry arrives. Lucy confesses that she has not heard from her husband and that she is pregnant. Mrs. Berry takes Lucy back to London where she gives birth. Richard learns that Lord Mountfalcon was trying to seduce Lucy. He says goodbye to Lucy and duels Lord Mountfalcon in France. Lucy loses her mind and dies.
Plot summary for anyone curious: Sir Austin Feverel’s wife runs off with his best friend. Sir Austin is left behind at Rayhnham Abbey with his son Richard. Richard gets in a scrape with a local farmer. When Richard goes to apologize, he meets the farmer’s niece, Lucy Desborough. When Richard is 18, his father travels to London to seek an appropriate bride for his son. Meanwhile, Richard meets Lucy again and falls in love. The spark of love threatens to explode the strict “System” of education that Sir Austin insists upon for his son. Richard marries Lucy and they head off for the Isle of Wight. On the Isle of Wight, Richard and Lucy fall under the bad influence of Lady Judith and Lord Mountfalcon. Richard decides to leave his wife on the Isle of Wight and travel to London to meet his father. Richard waits 5 weeks in London and still his father does not come to meet him. In the meantime, he goes to a dinner at Richmond where a beautiful Mrs. Mount flirts with him. Meanwhile, Lord Mountfalcon has stayed on the Isle of Wight (even though the season is rainy and windy) because he loves Lucy. He is about to declare his love for Lucy when the servant Mrs. Bessy Berry arrives. Lucy confesses that she has not heard from her husband and that she is pregnant. Mrs. Berry takes Lucy back to London where she gives birth. Richard learns that Lord Mountfalcon was trying to seduce Lucy. He says goodbye to Lucy and duels Lord Mountfalcon in France. Lucy loses her mind and dies.
Want to read
July 17, 2016* 1000 novels everyone must read: the definitive list: Family and Self
Selected by the Guardian's Review team and a panel of expert judges, this list includes only novels – no memoirs, no short stories, no long poems – from any decade and in any language. Originally published in thematic supplements – love, crime, comedy, family and self, state of the nation, science fiction and fantasy, war and travel – they appear here for the first time.
Selected by the Guardian's Review team and a panel of expert judges, this list includes only novels – no memoirs, no short stories, no long poems – from any decade and in any language. Originally published in thematic supplements – love, crime, comedy, family and self, state of the nation, science fiction and fantasy, war and travel – they appear here for the first time.
July 12, 2016
More people should read George Meredith. This is insightful, witty, and compassionate writing. But with Meredith's novels the language is so interestingly ironic and literary that it feels like you're looking through several different lenses onto the action or particular characters. It makes for a slow read.
Want to read
August 10, 2012This book was mentioned in A Life of Letter of Arthur Conan Doyle. Oscar Wilde exclaimed "Ah, Meredith! Who can define him? His syle is chaos illumined by flashes of lightning."
Want to read
January 27, 2016Project Gutenberg - http://www.gutenberg.org/files/4412/4...
May 30, 2022
The “ordeal” that young Richard must endure in The Ordeal of Richard Feverel is “The System” under which his father is raising him. Sir Austin Feverel is a self-declared “Scientific Humanist” (whatever that is) who is disappointed in his own marriage after his wife leaves him to run off with a poet when Richard is but a boy. Accordingly, Sir Austin is determined that Richard should be vigorously protected from societal evils in general, which is the underlying principle of The System, until he can be safely and appropriately married in preparation to become the heir to Raynham Abbey, Sir Austin’s country estate.
Not surprisingly, things don’t go as planned for Sir Austin, and his romantic son soon falls hopelessly in love with Lucy Desborough, a country maid well below Richard’s aristocratic breeding. Sir Austin conspires energetically—indeed, he recruits friends and relatives to aid his conspiracy—to keep Richard and Lucy apart at all costs. Sir Austin dismisses authoritative advice from trusted friends that he is being too hard on his son, that he should let his son see and learn from mistakes he will make, and that he will turn out undamaged in the end.
It appears, however, that all but Sir Austin can see The System is a doomed enterprise. From that point, the novel’s title could easily be changed to The Ordeal of Sir Austin Feverel, as he gradually and grudgingly begins to understand the flaws and injustices of his parenting approach. Readers are likely to judge Richard as a foolish, immature, and gullible young man, and Lucy as a loyal, faithful, and passionate woman—although her endless patience with Richard often defies credulity.
Author George Meredith has written a fairly fast-paced story with a host of memorable, authentic characters (a few too many for some readers, no doubt), and though there is the central love story, there are a number of parallel stories of unrequited love, not to mention a couple of instances of heinous mischief directed separately at Richard and Lucy in an attempt to thwart their mutual love.
Even allowing for the publication date of the novel (mid-eighteenth century), when all books came as hefty “three-deckers,” The Ordeal of Richard Feverel is about a third too long at 550 pages. Meredith’s prose, especially when he wants to reveal a simple happening or fact, can become tedious and burdensome. There are also a couple of loose ends (for me, at any rate) that don’t appear to get neatly tied up, namely, Richard’s lost-then-found mother, and the lost-then-found husband of Richard’s childhood nurse, Mrs. Berry.
Meredith did take a risk with the novel’s ending, however, and broke tradition with the classic and conventional happy-ever-after scenario, so if readers make it halfway through the novel, they are encouraged to stick with it to the end for some high drama!
Not surprisingly, things don’t go as planned for Sir Austin, and his romantic son soon falls hopelessly in love with Lucy Desborough, a country maid well below Richard’s aristocratic breeding. Sir Austin conspires energetically—indeed, he recruits friends and relatives to aid his conspiracy—to keep Richard and Lucy apart at all costs. Sir Austin dismisses authoritative advice from trusted friends that he is being too hard on his son, that he should let his son see and learn from mistakes he will make, and that he will turn out undamaged in the end.
It appears, however, that all but Sir Austin can see The System is a doomed enterprise. From that point, the novel’s title could easily be changed to The Ordeal of Sir Austin Feverel, as he gradually and grudgingly begins to understand the flaws and injustices of his parenting approach. Readers are likely to judge Richard as a foolish, immature, and gullible young man, and Lucy as a loyal, faithful, and passionate woman—although her endless patience with Richard often defies credulity.
Author George Meredith has written a fairly fast-paced story with a host of memorable, authentic characters (a few too many for some readers, no doubt), and though there is the central love story, there are a number of parallel stories of unrequited love, not to mention a couple of instances of heinous mischief directed separately at Richard and Lucy in an attempt to thwart their mutual love.
Even allowing for the publication date of the novel (mid-eighteenth century), when all books came as hefty “three-deckers,” The Ordeal of Richard Feverel is about a third too long at 550 pages. Meredith’s prose, especially when he wants to reveal a simple happening or fact, can become tedious and burdensome. There are also a couple of loose ends (for me, at any rate) that don’t appear to get neatly tied up, namely, Richard’s lost-then-found mother, and the lost-then-found husband of Richard’s childhood nurse, Mrs. Berry.
Meredith did take a risk with the novel’s ending, however, and broke tradition with the classic and conventional happy-ever-after scenario, so if readers make it halfway through the novel, they are encouraged to stick with it to the end for some high drama!
September 22, 2019
Richard Feverel is the darling child of a nobleman, Sir Austin, whose life has been warped by his wife running off with his best friend, a poet to whom he gave house-room. He determines that Richard will not share the same fate, and educates him according to a comprehensive 'System' of manners and restraints. The boy is left to brood on his own natural impulses--of pride, and towards hot-headedness and violence--rather than these impulses being checked, with the sovereign aim being to keep him in a state of romantic innocence, out of which any young woman in the country, Sir Austin thinks, would be pleased to pluck him and take him unto marriage. To the surprise of Sir Austin's friend and admirer Lady Blandish, the system--an unconscionable 'scientific' experiment upon human life--seems to be working well when, first, the fourteen year-old Richard repents of recklessly setting fire to a tenant farmer's ricks, and, next, when he apparently gives up the farmer's ingenuous Catholic niece, with whom he has fallen in love.
Richard's 'ordeal' is the consequences for his life and character of being raised experimentally. Partly by chance, he is reunited with his love--the farmer's niece, Lucy--and induces her to elope. She breathes out that he is her 'husband', and we are given to understand that they have sex; but he marries her, with the connivance of an earthly, bustling woman that was once his nurse and is now fortuitously a Kensington landlady. This is the death of the System--its ironically honourable end in a marriage-bed, as Richard's cousin and preceptor Adrian, a drawling observer of the world's follies, comments. But the marriage is ill-starred. For one thing, it is the death of Clare, a girl about a year younger than Richard and his cousin, who has been raised by her mother, another of Sir Austin's inmates, to regard him as her destined. The wedding ceremony goes off badly with the couple being married with their landlady's heavy band. Honeymooning on the Isle of Wight, the couple fall in with a 'fast' set of aristocrats, including the dissolute Lord Mountfalcon, who, smitten with Lucy, pays a fascinating courtesan, Mrs Mount, to detain Richard in London as his father makes him wait before favouring him with an interview. How will the protege of the System cope when exposed to a woman's raillery, cynicism, courage and fascinations?
Meredith's writing is frequently brilliant, almost always fantastical and literary, sometimes tortuous. His minor characters--the dyspeptic uncle Hippias, the epicure Adrian, the down-to-earth landlady Mrs Berry--are founts of old English humour. The mode of the novel, though, is closer to that of a morality than a comedy. The story's action is vigorous; but it is frequently overlaid with distracting comic interludes, passages of purple prose (mostly mocking the characters' high-mindedness) and the dissection of the aphorisms of the 'Scientific Humanist' habit of mind. Richard's seduction (is it?) by the previously traduced Mrs Mount, the daughter of a respectable linen-draper, is maybe the most eye-opening section of the book. The courtesan dresses as a man in the persona of an idle lord, Sir Julius, and expresses solidarity for men who dress as women and are taken up by policemen in the streets. Meredith's story is contemporary with Dickens--but you don't find that in the more canonical writer.
Richard's 'ordeal' is the consequences for his life and character of being raised experimentally. Partly by chance, he is reunited with his love--the farmer's niece, Lucy--and induces her to elope. She breathes out that he is her 'husband', and we are given to understand that they have sex; but he marries her, with the connivance of an earthly, bustling woman that was once his nurse and is now fortuitously a Kensington landlady. This is the death of the System--its ironically honourable end in a marriage-bed, as Richard's cousin and preceptor Adrian, a drawling observer of the world's follies, comments. But the marriage is ill-starred. For one thing, it is the death of Clare, a girl about a year younger than Richard and his cousin, who has been raised by her mother, another of Sir Austin's inmates, to regard him as her destined. The wedding ceremony goes off badly with the couple being married with their landlady's heavy band. Honeymooning on the Isle of Wight, the couple fall in with a 'fast' set of aristocrats, including the dissolute Lord Mountfalcon, who, smitten with Lucy, pays a fascinating courtesan, Mrs Mount, to detain Richard in London as his father makes him wait before favouring him with an interview. How will the protege of the System cope when exposed to a woman's raillery, cynicism, courage and fascinations?
Meredith's writing is frequently brilliant, almost always fantastical and literary, sometimes tortuous. His minor characters--the dyspeptic uncle Hippias, the epicure Adrian, the down-to-earth landlady Mrs Berry--are founts of old English humour. The mode of the novel, though, is closer to that of a morality than a comedy. The story's action is vigorous; but it is frequently overlaid with distracting comic interludes, passages of purple prose (mostly mocking the characters' high-mindedness) and the dissection of the aphorisms of the 'Scientific Humanist' habit of mind. Richard's seduction (is it?) by the previously traduced Mrs Mount, the daughter of a respectable linen-draper, is maybe the most eye-opening section of the book. The courtesan dresses as a man in the persona of an idle lord, Sir Julius, and expresses solidarity for men who dress as women and are taken up by policemen in the streets. Meredith's story is contemporary with Dickens--but you don't find that in the more canonical writer.
September 27, 2019
Note: there are two versions of this novel, one from 1859 and the 1878 revision(one used in modern editions of the novel).
Other than that this is a great story and the novel that features the most adventure in any of Meredith’s works.
Other than that this is a great story and the novel that features the most adventure in any of Meredith’s works.
October 29, 2017
Certainly one of the most important and artistically adventurous British novels of the 19th Century.
July 6, 2018
The ordeal ends with defeat by this book, can only stomach 80%
Shelved as 'fic-guided'
August 9, 2020The Victorians took little pleasure in reading difficult novels. ‘There ought to be no need of sitting down before the thing with tools and dynamite like burglars at a safe’, proclaimed George Saintsbury (a critic who loved wine even more than he loved fiction). ‘It is the first duty of the novelist to let himself be read.’ If asked in 1859 who was the novelist least willing to ‘let himself be read’, many Victorian readers would have nominated George Meredith. But as sometimes happens, they chose, on the whole, to give him the benefit of the doubt. He may have served up some tough literary viands, but that was because he was a cleverer writer than they were readers. Meredith led a long life and, as the era drew to an end, was much honoured by discriminating Victorians. They persisted in thinking there was something important inside that Meredithean safe – if only they could crack the damn thing open. Some evidently did. James Joyce, it is recorded, was a fervent admirer of Feverel. Buried in some university vault, doubtless, is a doctoral dissertation on what it contributed to ULYSSES. I don’t want to read it.
Feverel is far and away the most accessible for those tempted to make any assault on the Meredith strongbox. Its subject is how best to educate a child. Richard Feverel’s mother deserts her husband, leaving her young son behind. Meredith’s wife had done the same in the months before he began work on the novel (later deserted by her lover, she went on to kill herself). Young Richard is brought up by his father, Sir Austin, on scientific educational principles. At the centre of the novel is a meditation on Herbert Spencer’s then recently aired views that non-institutional education was infinitely preferable to school education. The ‘reform’ which would soon deliver the 1870 Universal Education Act was in the air. Sir Austin’s sub-Spencerian ‘system’ – which keeps Richard secluded at home – is tested to breaking point when the boy falls in love with Lucy Desborough, the niece of a neighbouring farmer. Sir Austin opposes the match, naturally enough (there is no provision in the system for such vagaries) but the young couple marry secretly and run away. In London, Richard and Lucy – both dangerously inexperienced in the ways of the metropolitan world (they have had no ‘social education’) – are exposed to various trials and temptations. She attracts the dangerous attention of Lord Mountfalcon, who sends a courtesan to seduce Richard. The couple separate. Lucy, unknown to her husband, bears a child. Sir Austin is finally brought round to approval of his daughter-in-law. But Richard is badly wounded in a duel with Mountfalcon in France. Lucy goes mad and dies while her husband lies paralysed, a casualty of his father’s system. He is last seen on his sick-bed, ‘striving to image her on his brain’.
The Ordeal of Richard Feverel was banned by the circulating library ‘leviathan’, Charles Mudie. The great librarian’s Calvinist susceptibilities were particularly affronted by the seduction scene in which the married hero succumbs to the wiles of the seductive Bella Mount:
as he looked down on her haggard loveliness, not divine sorrow but a devouring jealousy sprang like fire in his breast, and set him rocking with horrid pain. He bent closer to her pale beseeching face. Her eyes still drew him down.
‘Bella! No! no! promise me! swear it!’
‘Lost, Richard! lost for ever! give me up!’
He cried: ‘I never will!’ and strained her in his arms, and kissed her passionately on the lips.
Torrid stuff for 1859, and too much so for Mr Mudie, whose boycott effectively killed sales of the novel – while stimulating considerable curiosity about its contents.
Getting through this book is like clambering, bare-kneed, over barbed wire, but at the heart of the novel, for those who make it there, is a still-relevant, and still-raging, debate over the best form of education for a young child. Should it be based on ‘system’ or should the child be allowed to range freely, as nature intended? At the time of writing, system is winning.
Feverel is far and away the most accessible for those tempted to make any assault on the Meredith strongbox. Its subject is how best to educate a child. Richard Feverel’s mother deserts her husband, leaving her young son behind. Meredith’s wife had done the same in the months before he began work on the novel (later deserted by her lover, she went on to kill herself). Young Richard is brought up by his father, Sir Austin, on scientific educational principles. At the centre of the novel is a meditation on Herbert Spencer’s then recently aired views that non-institutional education was infinitely preferable to school education. The ‘reform’ which would soon deliver the 1870 Universal Education Act was in the air. Sir Austin’s sub-Spencerian ‘system’ – which keeps Richard secluded at home – is tested to breaking point when the boy falls in love with Lucy Desborough, the niece of a neighbouring farmer. Sir Austin opposes the match, naturally enough (there is no provision in the system for such vagaries) but the young couple marry secretly and run away. In London, Richard and Lucy – both dangerously inexperienced in the ways of the metropolitan world (they have had no ‘social education’) – are exposed to various trials and temptations. She attracts the dangerous attention of Lord Mountfalcon, who sends a courtesan to seduce Richard. The couple separate. Lucy, unknown to her husband, bears a child. Sir Austin is finally brought round to approval of his daughter-in-law. But Richard is badly wounded in a duel with Mountfalcon in France. Lucy goes mad and dies while her husband lies paralysed, a casualty of his father’s system. He is last seen on his sick-bed, ‘striving to image her on his brain’.
The Ordeal of Richard Feverel was banned by the circulating library ‘leviathan’, Charles Mudie. The great librarian’s Calvinist susceptibilities were particularly affronted by the seduction scene in which the married hero succumbs to the wiles of the seductive Bella Mount:
as he looked down on her haggard loveliness, not divine sorrow but a devouring jealousy sprang like fire in his breast, and set him rocking with horrid pain. He bent closer to her pale beseeching face. Her eyes still drew him down.
‘Bella! No! no! promise me! swear it!’
‘Lost, Richard! lost for ever! give me up!’
He cried: ‘I never will!’ and strained her in his arms, and kissed her passionately on the lips.
Torrid stuff for 1859, and too much so for Mr Mudie, whose boycott effectively killed sales of the novel – while stimulating considerable curiosity about its contents.
Getting through this book is like clambering, bare-kneed, over barbed wire, but at the heart of the novel, for those who make it there, is a still-relevant, and still-raging, debate over the best form of education for a young child. Should it be based on ‘system’ or should the child be allowed to range freely, as nature intended? At the time of writing, system is winning.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 3, 2024
A masterpiece of irony and tragedy, ‘The Ordeal of Richard Feverel’ had to undergo its own ordeals of rejection, condemnation and outrage from a prudish public who, to quote a much later poet, “(could) not bear very much reality.” And realistic this novel is, even down to scenes of adult lovemaking, when pianos had skirts to hide their legs from the modest eyes of Victorian women.
While many Victorian writers sought the redemption of “fallen women” usually by a penitent’s death or shutting her away in some kind of convent, and Victorian society was active in the opening of Magdalene houses for ‘reformed’ prostitutes, Meredith turns the torch to the causes of such women: men. Whether men desert their wives, or elope with other men’s wives, or seduce inexperienced girls, or are professional adulterers, or shut their eyes to reality, they are each responsible for the shame and contumely that is the fate of the unfortunate women. It is no accident that Society reserves its scorn for the two good men in this book: Richard's cousin Austin Wentworth, who married the housemaid who had seduced him, or whom he had seduced (given the later events of the book, it is probable that she did the seducing), and Ripton Thomas, Richard's friend, who frequented the establishment of his friend ‘Miss Random’ and her professional sisters.
Thus it is with Sir Austin Feverel when his wife runs away with his best friend, that his ‘Platonic’ friend Lady Blandish be by his side. To her he expounds his theory of education: his boy shall be brought up in innocence, meaning near isolation: no school, no companions, only men for tutors. What Sir Austin fails to recognise is that innocence literally cannot grow in isolation. Richard grows up obedient to his father, even loving him, but he is in many ways ungovernable: self willed, hot-tempered, arrogant and autocratic, even if takes an act of arson to assert his superiority.
The inevitable crash, when it happens, is just what might been expected. Richard falls in love with the niece of a neighbouring farmer (the Feverel family unkindly refer to her as ‘the dairymaid’). Eventually, he marries her privately, but less than two months later, is unfaithful to her. When he realises how greatly he has wronged her, and left her open to advances by other men, it is already too late. The ending is all that a Victorian melodrama should be.
Meredith uses the same elements beloved of the Victorians to turn the tables on them – a System usually of education, social or moral reform, contrasts between a healthy boy and a repressed one, melodrama, high comedy followed by tragedy. The one element the Victorian writer (and reader) did not use was sexual explicitness. Meredith did not, either, but he leaves his reader in no doubt of his meaning. It is also unusual for a Victorian novel (this book was published first in 1859) to change horses mid- stream, and to change to tragedy more than halfway through, although, to be fair to Meredith, his hints are present from the beginning.
It is not so much the plot that makes ‘Feverel’ such compelling reading. Rather, it is the direct attack on Victorian hypocrisy, manners and morals, uttered in a vein of irony unparalleled in the language. Unlike other novelists of the time, and unlike the Victorian reading public, who liked polished perfection in their principal characters, none of his characters are angelic, heroic, virtuous or even plain beautiful. All are flawed, even the pretty dairymaid (what was she about, meeting Richard night after night to talk of love?!). And for all their weaknesses, we are sympathetic to them, and suffer with them. Nor are the villains the traditional villains of literature; these are only men and women who grab what life offers. If others are injured, well, too bad.
While many Victorian writers sought the redemption of “fallen women” usually by a penitent’s death or shutting her away in some kind of convent, and Victorian society was active in the opening of Magdalene houses for ‘reformed’ prostitutes, Meredith turns the torch to the causes of such women: men. Whether men desert their wives, or elope with other men’s wives, or seduce inexperienced girls, or are professional adulterers, or shut their eyes to reality, they are each responsible for the shame and contumely that is the fate of the unfortunate women. It is no accident that Society reserves its scorn for the two good men in this book: Richard's cousin Austin Wentworth, who married the housemaid who had seduced him, or whom he had seduced (given the later events of the book, it is probable that she did the seducing), and Ripton Thomas, Richard's friend, who frequented the establishment of his friend ‘Miss Random’ and her professional sisters.
Thus it is with Sir Austin Feverel when his wife runs away with his best friend, that his ‘Platonic’ friend Lady Blandish be by his side. To her he expounds his theory of education: his boy shall be brought up in innocence, meaning near isolation: no school, no companions, only men for tutors. What Sir Austin fails to recognise is that innocence literally cannot grow in isolation. Richard grows up obedient to his father, even loving him, but he is in many ways ungovernable: self willed, hot-tempered, arrogant and autocratic, even if takes an act of arson to assert his superiority.
The inevitable crash, when it happens, is just what might been expected. Richard falls in love with the niece of a neighbouring farmer (the Feverel family unkindly refer to her as ‘the dairymaid’). Eventually, he marries her privately, but less than two months later, is unfaithful to her. When he realises how greatly he has wronged her, and left her open to advances by other men, it is already too late. The ending is all that a Victorian melodrama should be.
Meredith uses the same elements beloved of the Victorians to turn the tables on them – a System usually of education, social or moral reform, contrasts between a healthy boy and a repressed one, melodrama, high comedy followed by tragedy. The one element the Victorian writer (and reader) did not use was sexual explicitness. Meredith did not, either, but he leaves his reader in no doubt of his meaning. It is also unusual for a Victorian novel (this book was published first in 1859) to change horses mid- stream, and to change to tragedy more than halfway through, although, to be fair to Meredith, his hints are present from the beginning.
It is not so much the plot that makes ‘Feverel’ such compelling reading. Rather, it is the direct attack on Victorian hypocrisy, manners and morals, uttered in a vein of irony unparalleled in the language. Unlike other novelists of the time, and unlike the Victorian reading public, who liked polished perfection in their principal characters, none of his characters are angelic, heroic, virtuous or even plain beautiful. All are flawed, even the pretty dairymaid (what was she about, meeting Richard night after night to talk of love?!). And for all their weaknesses, we are sympathetic to them, and suffer with them. Nor are the villains the traditional villains of literature; these are only men and women who grab what life offers. If others are injured, well, too bad.
May 27, 2024
This book has been praised as protomodern on account of its self-conscious anti-realism. Its style could be called mock heroic or satirical or ironic, but the term that kept popping up in my mind as I read was "arch." It is never clear whether this tone is intended as a commentary on the characters, the society that they live in, or the state of the English novel in the mid-nineteenth century or possibly even a commentary by the author on himself; sometimes the mock-heroic praise could even be interpreted as being sincere. It's probably intended to be all of the above. I usually like novels with that kind of ambiguity, but there were a lot of points in my trudge through this muck that it just seemed like bad writing. It was rough going, and I often felt that my ordeal as a reader was harder than the titular ordeal of young Feverel.
Beyond the satirical style of the expository passages, the dialogue read like bad melodrama. I kept seeing the characters strutting around on a Victorian stage in bad costume and makeup, stumbling over the cheesy lines with the help of whispered cues from offstage. Maybe this was also intended, but it began to wear on me after the first hundred pages.
And the characters were cardboard cutouts - the drunk, the scholar, the pure young girl, the faithful servant, the crusty farmer and so on. The only exceptions were Richard and his father, the baronet. The father is manifestly a fool, but he is redeemed and given depth by his abiding love for Richard. Richard is a spoiled rich kid. Supposedly he grows over the course of the novel, but I didn't see the growth so much as I saw from the beginning that despite his hotheadedness, he always loved his family and that gave him the grounding that he needed to step back from his impulsive acts. So both of the two Feverels are at least two dimensional, which is one more dimension than any of the other characters have.
Beyond the satirical style of the expository passages, the dialogue read like bad melodrama. I kept seeing the characters strutting around on a Victorian stage in bad costume and makeup, stumbling over the cheesy lines with the help of whispered cues from offstage. Maybe this was also intended, but it began to wear on me after the first hundred pages.
And the characters were cardboard cutouts - the drunk, the scholar, the pure young girl, the faithful servant, the crusty farmer and so on. The only exceptions were Richard and his father, the baronet. The father is manifestly a fool, but he is redeemed and given depth by his abiding love for Richard. Richard is a spoiled rich kid. Supposedly he grows over the course of the novel, but I didn't see the growth so much as I saw from the beginning that despite his hotheadedness, he always loved his family and that gave him the grounding that he needed to step back from his impulsive acts. So both of the two Feverels are at least two dimensional, which is one more dimension than any of the other characters have.
July 27, 2018
I hoped for something as good as The Egoist and I expected something not too much worse, and I don't know exactly what I got. Feverel defies adequate description insofar as it's unlike any novel I've read, in certain ways. It's quite a curiosity. It operates on a metaphorical level that suspends narrative events somewhere outside reality, challenging one's sense of where and when - and how, for that matter - the action takes place. This is a novel savvy in pagan mythology and Oriental customs and shamelessly disposed to hypophora, in which one can catch a character "serenely chanting Greek hexameters" or read that a "candle wore with dignity the brigand's hat of midnight, and cocked a drunken eye [...] under it."
It was strange overall, not a little unsettling - or surprisingly overt - in its sexual politics, spectacular at certain prose passages, and weak on organization. It strongly reminded me of watching The Magnificent Ambersons: the genius flashes forth periodically, but better assembly is required. The narrative lacked proportion as a whole, instead proceeding in the choppy tracks of a novelist maybe learning his chops; Feverel was Meredith's first novel, after all. His people, too, are dubiously motivated and rather unnaturally drawn because their representation is subordinated to that of ideational forces, which brings to mind something Forster wrote about Meredith's characters being other than human, or his novels painting other than life, but which isn't necessarily bad - mostly different, the way it's managed here. On the whole, I'd call Feverel heavily idiosyncratic if that sufficiently conveyed the distance it measures from your standard work of fiction, let alone your trusty Victorian classic.
It was strange overall, not a little unsettling - or surprisingly overt - in its sexual politics, spectacular at certain prose passages, and weak on organization. It strongly reminded me of watching The Magnificent Ambersons: the genius flashes forth periodically, but better assembly is required. The narrative lacked proportion as a whole, instead proceeding in the choppy tracks of a novelist maybe learning his chops; Feverel was Meredith's first novel, after all. His people, too, are dubiously motivated and rather unnaturally drawn because their representation is subordinated to that of ideational forces, which brings to mind something Forster wrote about Meredith's characters being other than human, or his novels painting other than life, but which isn't necessarily bad - mostly different, the way it's managed here. On the whole, I'd call Feverel heavily idiosyncratic if that sufficiently conveyed the distance it measures from your standard work of fiction, let alone your trusty Victorian classic.
January 30, 2021
This is not a bad book. But I had trouble reading it. I tried, maybe not too hard, to keep myself being interested. And again and again, reading a couple of pages I realized, that I did not really understand what was going on. Meredith is not easy to read, but also not extremely difficult. And as so often in such cases, I would like to split the blame equally between him and myself.
So, what is the ordeal? The young Richard is not allowed to go to school. Because his father thinks that this would corrupt him. Wiseguy, the father. He has a "system". Speaking of wisdom, all through the book we get some more or less appropriate aphorisms from the Pilgim’s scrip.
Richard gets into trouble when after being horsewhipped by some farmer for trespassing he finds it appropriate to burn down the place. This sounds more exciting than it really is. The action goes on in the mind of our hero. Whether to accept responsibility. First, he and his friend try to free the guy who gets blamed out of prison, just like Tom & Huck.
Then, of course, in due time, he falls in love with the niece of the farmer. And the one thing extraordinary in this novel is that he just marries her. Not at the end of the novel but in the middle.
And the woman is a dairymaid and catholic. He is only 19 years old at the time. And you guessed it, the father is not amused.
Then there is a long lost mother, a cousin, who had hoped to get poor Richard and promptly dies. And a villain trying to seduce the young wife. A son. Hero being seduced. We even get a duel. But only in passing.
I wish I could report, that in the end, all is well. But no. I also wish I could have cared. 5/10
So, what is the ordeal? The young Richard is not allowed to go to school. Because his father thinks that this would corrupt him. Wiseguy, the father. He has a "system". Speaking of wisdom, all through the book we get some more or less appropriate aphorisms from the Pilgim’s scrip.
Richard gets into trouble when after being horsewhipped by some farmer for trespassing he finds it appropriate to burn down the place. This sounds more exciting than it really is. The action goes on in the mind of our hero. Whether to accept responsibility. First, he and his friend try to free the guy who gets blamed out of prison, just like Tom & Huck.
Then, of course, in due time, he falls in love with the niece of the farmer. And the one thing extraordinary in this novel is that he just marries her. Not at the end of the novel but in the middle.
And the woman is a dairymaid and catholic. He is only 19 years old at the time. And you guessed it, the father is not amused.
Then there is a long lost mother, a cousin, who had hoped to get poor Richard and promptly dies. And a villain trying to seduce the young wife. A son. Hero being seduced. We even get a duel. But only in passing.
I wish I could report, that in the end, all is well. But no. I also wish I could have cared. 5/10
October 19, 2021
I enjoy George Meredith, I really do, but this was not... how do I say this... well, GOOD. The dense literariness was there. The dripping irony was there. The philosophizing was there, though not as refined as in his later works. But the plot? It was just... silly. I can't even make sense of what each character was trying to accomplish. I think Meredith just wanted , and he figured the reader wouldn't notice that he fudged his way around it. I noticed, George! *wags finger* You gotta make your biggest plot point actually make sense, buddy, or all your literariness and irony and philosophizing will fall flat for me. When every single character is plotting something that has nothing to do with everyone else's plots, yet it all adds up to a perfectly seamless persecution against one specific character with a result that somehow none of these people expected yet was pretty boringly inevitable... well, it's silly. That's all I can say.
But I forgive him. It was his first novel. He got a lot better.
(By the way, how did he even get away with publishing this in the Victorian era? It got pretty racy in an innuendo-y way. Actually, in pretty overt ways in a couple scenes, not gonna lie. Nearly gave me the vapours!)
But I forgive him. It was his first novel. He got a lot better.
(By the way, how did he even get away with publishing this in the Victorian era? It got pretty racy in an innuendo-y way. Actually, in pretty overt ways in a couple scenes, not gonna lie. Nearly gave me the vapours!)
May 2, 2018
This is a challenging and subversive novel. Challenging in that its verbose style can be difficult to penetrate. Subversive because of its theme of rebellion against a tyrannical "system" of parental education leads to a dark tale of sexual betrayal and overwhelming tragedy.
If you can get past the writing style - and I found this difficult at times, which is why it took me a comparatively long time to read - you will find reading this novel a worthwhile and memorable experience. The Oxford World Classics edition is also enhanced by an excellent introduction by John Halperin. Read it after the book and it helpfully places this novel in the context of the changing styles of Victorian English fiction.
If you can get past the writing style - and I found this difficult at times, which is why it took me a comparatively long time to read - you will find reading this novel a worthwhile and memorable experience. The Oxford World Classics edition is also enhanced by an excellent introduction by John Halperin. Read it after the book and it helpfully places this novel in the context of the changing styles of Victorian English fiction.
October 16, 2022
A work of linguistic erudition, some humour and a story of misguided paternal guidance and Rules. Richard develops from an arsonist youth to a confused, weak and passionate adult, buffeted by benevolent and malevolent friends, relations and acquaintances. Inevitably - or avoidably - it all ends in tears. Quite enjoyable but sometimes frustrating moral assumptions and outcomes!
November 9, 2022
With apologies to Professor Stone (Victorian Lit), this was a true bore.
Over written, approaching florid, with a ceaseless stream of unsympathetic or hammer headed characters.
Bought this one decades earlier, and it has been sitting on the shelves.
The $1.00 I spent is OK, the reading time lost is not.
A drag.
Over written, approaching florid, with a ceaseless stream of unsympathetic or hammer headed characters.
Bought this one decades earlier, and it has been sitting on the shelves.
The $1.00 I spent is OK, the reading time lost is not.
A drag.
March 28, 2018
I read this for a class. It was a little too recondite for my taste.
June 3, 2019
A truly necessary novel.
November 29, 2022
My essay "A Structural View of Meredith’s The Ordeal of Richard Feverel" is posted on my blog at http://williamseaton.blogspot.com/201....
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