Romola

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A nice, well researched historical renaissance novel with Victorian touch. Everything that you expect from good historical fiction: A couple of historical characters to google, great personal adventures and tragedies in a very real setting.

Romola as such is ofcourse perhaps a bit too well off with access to education and privileges, but Eliot hardly tries to hide the links to 1850's struggles between religion, traditional values and earthly lusts and pleasures. ( )

700 pages is a long way to go for three stars.

The time period is 1492-1498 Florence, where political winds are shifting and various factions are vying for power – the old guard Mediceans, the religious reformers under priest and fiery orator Savonarola, and the Arrabbiati, those who would put pleasure first. There are several historical figures who make cameos but it’s Savonarola’s struggles with corrupt Pope Alexander VI (perhaps known to the reader from history or from the Showtime series The Borgias :) and his desire to purify Florence through the ‘Bonfire of the Vanities’ that is the main focus of the ‘historical fiction’ aspect of the book, carrying on to his ultimate execution.

Eliot interweaves this with the fictional story of Tito Melema, an educated young Greek, new to Florence but who quickly immerses himself into its politics. He is pleasant enough on the surface, but commits unpardonable acts against his own father, who he leaves in slavery, a young girl, who he deceives in a sham marriage, and Romola, his real wife, who he betrays not only by having a ‘wife’ on the side, but also by selling his father-in-law’s library when he dies, counter to the man’s final wishes and Tito’s promises. He also slickly plays on all of the political ‘teams’, maneuvering so that he’ll be successful regardless of whoever comes out on top.

It’s when his evil is revealed to the reader’s horror, and when it’s placed side by side with Romola, a sweet, smart young woman who has a strong sense of filial duty, a commitment to marriage, and a natural inclination to help the poor and downtrodden, that the novel is most successful. The scenes between the two, while few and far between, are electric.

However, my goodness, their relationship is so mired in the density of the book that I can’t possibly imagine a higher rating. Eliot clearly did a lot of research, but loads up too much of the first parts of the novel with the results of that, as well as an onslaught of Italian words and phrases, to the book’s detriment. She does explain the political maneuvering reasonably well, and it’s not a question of getting lost in the characters, but she’s tedious in her delivery. There are convenient coincidences in the plot that I forgive as being common to 19th century literature, but the plot meanders and in my view the book is just not well executed, certainly nowhere near her classic ‘Middlemarch’, or other historical fiction tomes, such as ‘War and Peace’.

If you’re an Eliot fan, interested in the time period, or just like the challenge of getting through giant books (all of which are true for me btw :), you may like Romola; otherwise, you should probably look elsewhere.

Quotes:
On man’s search for meaning, which is timeless. Wow, and on page one, loved this:
“And as the faint light of his course pierced into the dwellings of men, it fell, as now, on the rosy warmth of nestling children; on the haggard waking of sorrow and sickness; on the hasty uprising of the hard-handed labourer; and on the late sleep of the night-student, who had been questioning the stars or the sages, or his own soul, for that hidden knowledge which would break through the barrier of man’s brief life, and show its dark path, that seemed to bend no whither, to be an arc in an immeasurable circle of light and glory. The great river-courses which have shaped the lives of men have hardly changed; and those other streams, the life-currents that ebb and flow in human hearts, pulsate to the same great needs, the same great loves and terrors. As our thought follows close in the slow wake of the dawn, we are impressed with the broad sameness of the human lot, which never alters in the main headings of its history – hunger and labour, seed-time and harvest, love and death.”

On lying:
“But he had borrowed from the terrible usurer Falsehood, and the loan had mounted and mounted with the years, till he belonged to the usurer, body and soul.”

On marriage:
“Romola had an energy of her own which thwarted his, and no man, who is not exceptionally feeble, will endure being thwarted by his wife. Marriage must be a relation either of sympathy or of conquest.”

On old age:
“I think all lines of the human face have something either touching or grand, unless they seem to come from low passions. How fine old men are, like my godfather! Why should not old women look grand and simple?”

On selflessness:
“There are so many things wrong and difficult in the world, that no man can be great – he can hardly keep himself from wickedness – unless he gives up thinking much about pleasure or rewards, and gets strength to endure what is hard and painful.”

No connection to the previous book! Maybe it took so long to get through this that I forgot the previous book. :) Maybe it’s a sign to stop pointing out the connections. ( )

Eliot remains my favorite Victorian novelist. "Romola" was the last of her "big" novels that I had not read, and the first two thirds of the book is a slog-a-thon that poses considerable frustrations. However, the end third is one stunning revelation after another, and it's easy to see why Eliot loved it more than anything else she had written.

Read more at: http://thegrimreader.blogspot.com/2012/11/i-am-stunned-by-romola.html ( )