Customer Reviews

Parallel Lives: Five Victorian Marriages

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Phyllis Rose' Parellel Lives is an exploration of marriage: what makes a marriage, how marriages operate, the power struggles within marriage, the impact of patriarchy on marriage, sexuality within marriage and many, many other issues.

Ms Rose uses Victorian marriages to discuss these issues. This is a perceptive move. Our current culture, filled with self-help manuals and marriage classes, is in some ways less tolerate of eccentricity, more assured about how a successful marriage should operate. The tensions of sexuality, power and so on have been addressed, if not by individuals, within the culture and media at large. But Victorians did not have such an outlet. Dickens didn't know he was experiencing a well-documented male mid-life crisis when he engineered he and his wife's separation. This lack of self-knowledge makes the exploration of such marriages a fascinating study in human nature.

The book is split into the marriage biographies of five couples with two sections on Jane Welsh and Thomas Carlyle. A refreshing aspect of Ms Rose's Parallel Lives is that she is exploring these marriages from a feminist viewpoint that encompasses compassion for the man as well as for the woman. Her prose style is lively as she delves into the separate personal stories of her couples and how their personal stories influenced the marriage as a whole.

The book suffers a bit at the end. Ms Rose pulls back and attempts to apply general theory to her analysis. This is mostly unsuccessful. Ms Rose's gift lies in the personal--her ability to unravel this or that particular marriage and how this or that particular marriage was influenced by the problems of patricarchy--not in a general ideological stance that would supposedly solve those problems.

Recommendation: An intelligent and perceptive read. Buy it!

I loved this book when it was first published in the 80s for all the reasons put forth by the preceeding enthusiatic reviewers. So was startled to see it had only a 3 star rating when I visited Amazon a short while ago, searching for a second-hand copy.

Why this book has been out of print for so long is totally mystifying. For, you see, I'm not alone in my love of it. - every person I've loaned it to has had nothing but praise for it.

But most telling of all, each person has liked it so much that they've passed it on to a friend of theirs, who's evidently done the same, in a never-ending chain of handovers.

Hence my search for yet another second-hand copy earlier today, But, more to the point, isn't this the best recommendation any book can genuinely have: being handed on from person to person with the exhotation : "You'll really love this book. . . you've got to read it now!"

Wonderfully balanced and perceptive, this probing look at five unconventional Victorian marriages provides many insights into the sexual mores of that era. The section on the novelist George Eliot is especially haunting.

Who would imagine that a brief book highlighting the marriages of five literary Victorian couples would be such a delightful read. In the capable hands of author Phyllis Rose it is, as she surveys the marriages of John Ruskin, Thomas Carlyle, Charles Dickens, John Stuart Mill, and Marian Evans (George Eliot). The chapter on Evans focuses on her relationship with George Henry Lewes rather than her husband. The story of Jane Welsh and Thomas Carlyle bookends the narrative. The insights of the author into the incidents and foibles of these couples' lives portray their Victorian lives in a totally new perspective. This is a unique literary biography and her balanced and perceptive approach to each provides more insights than one might expect from such a slim volume. The analysis of their marriages and friendships is still relevant and speaks to our relationships more than a century later. I would recommend this book to anyone who has ever read and enjoyed any of these authors or who is just interested in what their lives were all about.

Phyliss Rose has written a fascinating book on five notorious nineteenth-century couples: Jane Welsh and Thomas Carlyle, Effie Gray and John Ruskin, Harriet Taylor and John Stuart Mill, Charles Dickens and Catherine Hogarth, George Elliot and George Henry Lewes. One union was happy. The rest were far from happy, but all were unconventional in their own way.

Jane Welsh was pretty, clever, and wealthy, but married Thomas Caryle without being in love with him. Yet, she couldn't imagine marrying anyone else. Years later, she grew to resent the husband who was so engrossed in his writing that hardly noticed her presence. Ironically, his writing and his encouraging Jane's writing is what induced her to marry him in the first place. After her death, Thomas Caryle found a journal where Jane vented about her husband's lack of appreciation for all she had given up for him. She also wrote extensively about her husband's attention to Lady Harriet Ashburton, which Jane became quite jealous of.

The marriage of Effie Gray and John Ruskin will seem especially bizarre to twenty-first century readers. This disastrous marriage was never consummated. The groom, who grew up lonely and sheltered by his parents, had a strong attachment to his parents that prevented him from assuming the role of a husband. Phyliss Rose also writes that the couple did attempt to consummate the marriage, but John was quite disgusted by Effie's naked body. Ruskin did his best to push his unwanted wife on another men, Painter John Everett Millais took the role that John Ruskin never wanted to begin with, The Gray/Ruskin marriage was annulled since it was proven that Effie was still a virgin.

Harriet Taylor's marriage to John Taylor fared no better. The marriage seemed ideal, Harriet was a beautiful bride and John was wealthy and had all the qualities a bride would want in a husband. The marriage, however, was unhappy on both sides. This marriage was consummated, but Harriet highly disliked sex with her husband. She fell in love with John Stuart Mill, who was her intellectual equal. Harriet's husband watched his wife become closer and closer to Mill. After a realization that separating the two was fruitless, he agreed to arrangement. John Taylor's death allowed Harriet to marry Mill, but the relationship was still considered improper because of the manner in which the couple met. The couple were never able to enjoy a proper marriage, even though they were legally married.

Charles Dickens and Catherine Hogarth's marriage was a bit more simple according to the author. The middle-aged author decided his marriage to Catherine was over after twenty-four years and ten children. The author decided the marriage was never meant to be, and prepared a separation from his wife. He attempted a reconcilation with an old flame, who he remembered as a beautiful eighteen-year old girl. The reunion resulted in disaster when he gazed on the old and plump Maria Beadnell. Dickens fascination with his old flame was over. When Dickens finally found another woman to satify him, Ellen Ternan, his relationship was complicated, not by the wife he cast aside, but by his relationship with the British public.

George Elliot (Marian Evans) and George Henry Lewes was the only union that was happy, but it was also one of the most shocking. Not only was Evans considerably older than Lewes, but Lewes was a married man. Lewes's wife, however, had her own affair going on and gave birth to quite a few children that were not fathered by her husband. Yet, society shun the Evans and Lewes relationship because he was a married man, yet what he had with his legal wife was hardly a marriage. After Lewes's death, Marian Evans married Walter Cross, who was also younger than her. Yet, society, again, isolated her because she had remarried too soon after Lewes's death, even though she was never legally married to him!

Parallel Lives was a fascinating and enlightening read. Thank God for divorce! One can only imagine what it was like being united with a man who you either didnt love, didn't like, or simply couldn't live with. Phyliss Rose speaks on and against the institution of marriage. She states that is far easier to make a marriage work when you don't have a choice, as opposed to ending a marriage because one of the parties decides it's not working and wants to begin again with someone new. But she argues that who needs marriage anyway? Since divorce has become too readily available, she states that it has made the institution of marriage virtually meaningless. I agree with her 110%!! Highly recommended book that sheds light not only on Victorian relationships, but also our own relationships and lives.

The book was a page turner for sure, but you have to remember that the details are interpreted through the lens of a feminist author. It gives great insights into how society's strong morals affected people's behavior with the pros and cons of this type of morality. As with anything there is good and bad. The author does a great job pointing out that we can think of relationships in many ways and work to create the kind of bonds that we'd like to rather than those prescribed by the society in which we live. Overall, the book gives a nice overview of how we arrived at marriage within our own society as this view into famous English marriages shows some of the history of our own American culture. An engaging read!

The author avers that every marriage is a narrative construct. Phyllis Rose describes the courtship and decision to marry of Jane Welsh and Thomas Carlyle.

The extraordinary and almost exclusive connection of John Ruskin with his parents is depicted. The thought-out plan of Frances and Charles Kingsley in the first four weeks of marriage is presented by way of contrast to the circumstances of John Ruskin and Effie Gray. Effie and John were troubled both by their own relationship and pulls and ties from their respective families. Ruskin was never to express remorse for his behavior. He did not understnd that he was partly at fault in the break up of his marriage.

The views of Effie and John could not be reconciled. The story of the Ruskins anticipates MIDDLEMARCH. Ruskin admired John Everett Millais. Effie was a model for one of the paintings of Millais. The Ruskins and Millais and others spent four months together on a sort of extended reading party in Scotland. After six years the Ruskins reached a stalemate. Effie sought practical advice from Lady Eastlake whose husband headed the Royal Academy. She advised her to confide in her parents. There was a dramatic flight and the serving of papers. Ruskin's domestic calamities were less important to him than Turner's death. Eventually Effie and Millais had eight children.

Harriet and John Taylor were Unitarians. They had an enlightened circle. Harriet was introduced to John Stuart Mill by her minister to divert her attention from marital incompatibilities. The Taylors and Mill formed a triangle. Two years after her husband's death Harriet agreed to become Mrs. Mill. Both Harriet and John Stuart Mill had been made lonely by exceptional intelligence. Mill's mind was a marvel, but he initiated nothing. Harriet served an executive function in the production of his books and articles. Mill's autobiography was written as a defense of his wife.

Catherine Hogarth attended a birthday party Charles Dickens gave himself. She was twenty. Dickens was astonishing for his outpouring of invention. Ambitious men marry young. Dickens had devoted male companions and in the early years of his marriage enjoyed domestic happiness. After 1850 Dickens changed. He craved emotional intensity with another person. At the time of starting LITTLE DORRIT restlessness tormented him. He turned to the theater, to acting. Her met Ellen Ternan and began a sentimental attachment. In later life Kate Dickens felt she and the other children were wicked not to take their mother's part.

The domestic life of George Henry Lewes and George Eliot centered on work. George Eliot seized her identity as a writer from her union with Lewes. The couple was spared the pursuit of respectibility.

Notes, bibliography, and a timeline appear at the back of the book. This book has been well-known and lavishly praised since it was issued. Nothing about it changes the high estimation bestowed previously. The book lives up to all of the anticipated pleasure envisioned in the reading of it.

The story of five marriages none of which quite fits the pattern of what might be considered to be a truly successful one i.e. one in which the mutual love and help of each other through the years helps both not only achieve their own private realization in work, but most importantly create a loving warm family with children who themselves form such a family. Instead we have Jane and Thomas Carlyle, Ruskin and Effi, Dickens and his mother - of -twelve he abandoned, the working Lewes and great George Eliot, each of whom is a story told well indeed by Rose who has a power of narrative and human perceptiveness that are outstanding.
I found this work to be a very enjoyable ' read' but not a great and inspiring one in regard to living my own life.

I read this book when it first came out and just re read it. The people then are just like people now. A gossipy fun book

Why did Phyllis Rose write this book? In her prologue, she states her opinion that marriage is the most creative thing we do. She says that marriages ("parallel lives")are fascinating because they "set two imaginations to work constructing narratives about experience presumed to be the same for both." Then she set out for 300+ pages in what amounts to little more than a gossipy complian-fest of "He did" - "She did". We get to hear all the wives gripes about their sexless, loveless marriages, then we get to hear about all the mens' whines about their frigid, shallow wives. Never once does Rose entertain the idea that one or more of her subjects may have been homosexual and were using marriage as the conventional way to get through their lives. Nothing does she tell us of what made these marriages so particularly and peculiarly Victorian - I know plenty of people right now in the year 2002 who have arranged their lives in much the same way as these Victorians.

Reading this book, all I could think of how it reaks of 1980's feminism: self-centered, self-serving. Rose flips sides faster than a pancake when it's convenient to her argument (whatever that may be.) One minute she cries for a woman who must marry a distateful man just so she can get out of her parents' house, but she doesn't find it strange that a woman's brother stick his nose into the private business of her relationship with other men. Go figure!

After finishing the book, I could only ask myself: Why was this book written???