As persuasively and sensitively as Tolstoy renders Levin and Kitty’s relationship, it is nonetheless a very particular type of marriage, one between a thinking man who sought not an intellectual partner but a complement, a yin to his yang—a lovely young wife, a “good” woman—only to find that coexistent with such goodness are desires of her own. Tolstoy treats this kind of complementary marriage as a given: what a sensitive but also sensible man like Levin would naturally seek.
This seems like a rather bleak perspective on marriage, but it should be read as a bleak view of a specific kind of marriage, and a critique of Lydgate’s romantic thinking. Where Tolstoy is sympathetic to Levin’s vision of love, Eliot is critical of Lydgate’s ideas.
.. Intelligence matters to these heroines because they crave, above almost everything else, conversation, the kind that requires mutual understanding.
.. the good marriages, that we see in their work may not represent, as we are often quick to think, a romantic sensibility or a form of sentimentality so much as an attempt to demonstrate the strength and desirability of equal marriages.
.. Herzog is a world-renowned scholar with a seemingly endless list of wealthy and successful friends; he has ample opportunity to express himself in writing, and to engage with peers. (Whether Ramona is an idiot or a savant, he won’t want for intellectual companionship.) Jane, on the other hand, is a lowly and lonely governess without any claims to status in the eyes of the world; her wit and originality of mind are entirely unrecognized until Rochester comes along and offers her the outlet she has long yearned for. For centuries, men have had far more opportunities to find intellectual outlets outside the romantic sphere—they’ve been able to travel more, to meet a broader range of people, to have professions, to win the respect of peers. Women, on the other hand, were forced to lean more heavily on love and marriage, for intellectual recognition and companionship as for everything else.
The End of Small Talk
Why did being with a stranger so often mean we couldn’t immediately talk about meaningful things?
.. I would have been very uncomfortable if a man had pushed me in this way into “deep” talk (and I would have felt pushed indeed) in the early stages of getting-to-know-you. It seems to me this is a way of forcing intimacy before I have any idea if I want that level of closeness with someone. Some women may love it but I shuddered when I read about it…
How To Apologize
2. Remember that you are a different person now, and this new person that you are cannot reasonably be expected to take responsibility for the old, bad version of yourself that you used to be. Remind other people, too, so they don’t waste any time being mad at a version of you that no longer exists.
.. 5. Forgiveness is something that other people owe you after you’ve hurt them, and it’s your right to extract it whenever you’re ready to have it. That forgiveness is yours, and you deserve it. If anyone tries to withhold it from you, you go in there and retrieve it through any means necessary.
.. 6. When you’re ready to move on, so should everyone else. Anyone who continues to suffer or experience anger after you’ve decided this falls into the category of “the past” is choosing to be unhappy when they don’t have to be. How sad for them. Tell them how sad that is for them, and encourage them to join you in the future, where it’s not a problem anymore.
Stop Googling. Let’s Talk.
Studies of conversation both in the laboratory and in natural settings show that when two people are talking, the mere presence of a phone on a table between them or in the periphery of their vision changes both what they talk about and the degree of connection they feel. People keep the conversation on topics where they won’t mind being interrupted. They don’t feel as invested in each other. Even a silent phone disconnects us.
.. Across generations, technology is implicated in this assault on empathy. We’ve gotten used to being connected all the time, but we have found ways around conversation — at least from conversation that is open-ended and spontaneous, in which we play with ideas and allow ourselves to be fully present and vulnerable. But it is in this type of conversation — where we learn to make eye contact, to become aware of another person’s posture and tone, to comfort one another and respectfully challenge one another — that empathy and intimacy flourish. In these conversations, we learn who we are.
.. The capacity for empathic conversation goes hand in hand with the capacity for solitude.
In solitude we find ourselves; we prepare ourselves to come to conversation with something to say that is authentic, ours. If we can’t gather ourselves, we can’t recognize other people for who they are. If we are not content to be alone, we turn others into the people we need them to be. If we don’t know how to be alone, we’ll only know how to be lonely.
.. In one experiment, many student subjects opted to give themselves mild electric shocks rather than sit alone with their thoughts.