English, Department of
Date of this Version
1986
Document Type
Article
Citation
The George Eliot Review 18 (1987)
Abstract
Laid in unconsecrated Eround, a scandal
still-note how good Gerard Hopkins
recoiled from what a queer, awkward girl,
frail-shouldered, massive, rickety,
volcanic" out of an unconsecrated
attachment, a marriage that was
no marriage (one would have added,
till opprobrium intervened, but
something better), to a pockmarked
lightweight of a drama critic, saw blossom:
this domestic improbability, this
moonftower. They were happy.
Happiness: that-as it always has been-was
the scandal. As for the unembarrassed
pursuit of same, run giddily
amok, by now, among the lit-up
purlieus of a game show (died
of a conniption, beaming), time
spared her that, though not the cold shoulder,
the raw east wind, fog, the roar that issues
from the other side of silence; not headache,
kidney stone, the ravages of cancer-or
of grief foreseen, met with, engulfed by,
just barely lived through.
Nature (she'd written; year before) repairs
her ravages, but not all. The hills
underneath their green vestures bear
the marks of past rending. Johnny Cross,
younger by two decades, a banker,
athletic, handsome, read Dante with her,
fell in love; repeatedly, distressingly
spoke of marriage, was at last accepted.
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Comments
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