Comprehension question

[Sahand]

Philip had only lived fifteen years, but those years had, most of them, been steeped in the sense of a lot irremediably hard. (The Mill on the Floss, George Eliot, Oxford University Press, p. 181)
Can any one explain me the structure and meaning of the last part?

[OrphanPip]

Philip had only lived fifteen years, but those years had, most of them, been steeped in the sense of a lot irremediably hard. (The Mill on the Floss, George Eliot, Oxford University Press, p. 181)
Can any one explain me the structure and meaning of the last part?

I think what is confusing you is the usage of "lot" as a noun rather than as a quantifier meaning many.

For example: His lot in life was that of a servant. Lot here means his material fate or condition.

Versus the more common usage: There are a lot of dogs barking tonight.

Eliot further complicates the structure by putting her adjective and adverb after the noun rather than the more common structure of putting them before the noun. (i.e. an irremediably hard lot).

[Pompey Bum]

Yes, what he said.

I was taught in elementary school (in the late 1960s) that a lot was slang. I wonder if it has improved its grammatical lot over the years. People sure say it a lot.

[Sahand]

Oh, thanks a lot! In fact I never happened to think of lot in terms of its NOUN part of speech.

[Sahand]

Dear friends, the structure of this sentence confuses me. It seems there are two main verbs in a subordinate structure without a coordinate conjunction:

Excellent men, who had been forced all their lives to spell on an impromptu-phonetic system, and having carried on a successful business in spite of this disadvantage, had acquired money enough to give their sons a better start in life than they had had themselves, must necessarily take their chance as to the conscience and the competence of the schoolmaster whose circular fell in their way, and appeared to promise so much more than they would ever have thought of asking for, including the return of linen, fork, and spoon.
(The Mill on the Floss, George Eliot, p 168)

the verbs "had acquired" and "must necessarily take" seem to be two main verbs.

[Red Terror]

Maybe you should read the British novel Mill on the Floss with an Oxford English dictionary on hand in lieu of an American English dictionary. There are some differences between the two countries' English --- not only the words, but also their respective idiomatic phrases.

[Jackson Richardson]

"Must ... take their chance..." is the main verb. "Had acquired" is part of a subordinate phrase modifying the subject ("excellent men").

[Sahand]

"Must ... take their chance..." is the main verb. "Had acquired" is part of a subordinate phrase modifying the subject ("excellent men").

So, if the subject of "had acquired" is "excellent men", what is the subject of "must...take"? if it is "excellent men" again, We cannot bind two verbs to a single subject without a coordinate conjunction.

[Gladys]

Read the quote bracketed thus:


Excellent men[, who had been forced all their lives to spell on an impromptu-phonetic system, and having carried on a successful business in spite of this disadvantage, had acquired money enough to give their sons a better start in life than they had had themselves,] must necessarily take their chance as to the conscience and the competence of the schoolmaster whose circular fell in their way, and appeared to promise so much more than they would ever have thought of asking for, including the return of linen, fork, and spoon.
(The Mill on the Floss, George Eliot, p 168)

Incidentally, I absolutely adore The Mill on the Floss. I think it as good as Middlemarch and I'd loved to discuss it with anyone.

[Jackson Richardson]

Thank you, Gladys for making it clear.

[Sahand]

Thanks. So the only way to analyse is to say "having carried on a successful business in spite of this disadvantage" is adverbial phrase and the coordinate conjunction "and" before this phrase links "had acquired" to who as its second verb. Is it right?

[ennison]

If I remember my distant schooling then "who" being a relative pronoun in the subject form is a way of avoiding repeating the subject again. Gladys has highlighted the parenthetical section that could be removed. So "take" is the main verb. It's also interesting how the adverb "necessarily" is inserted between the auxiliary and the main verb. Adverbs are very flexible as regards their grammatical position. It could have gone elsewhere but placing it there adds a weight and emphasis to the idea. I like the final touch about the return of the items.

[Sahand]

Thank you all dear friends.

[Sahand]

Here I have another quote of "The Mill on the Floss" p331

"Do not think too hardly of Philip. Ugly and deformed people have great need of unusual virtues,
because they are likely to be extremely uncomfortable without them; but the theory that unusual virtues
spring by a direct consequence out of personal disadvantages, as animals get thicker wool in severe
climates, is perhaps a little overstrained. The temptations of beauty are much dwelt upon, but I fancy they
only bear the same relation to those of ugliness, as the temptation to excess at a feast, where the delights
are varied for eye and ear as well as palate, bears to the temptations that assail the desperation of hunger.
Does not the Hunger Tower stand as the type of the utmost trial to what is human in us?"

I don't clearly get the meaning of the sentence beginning with "the temptations of beauty... of hunger"

[El Entenado]

He is saying that "relation between the temptations of beauty and the temptations of ugliness" is the same as "relation between the temptations to excess at a feast and the temptations that assail the desparation of hunger".

"where the delights are varied for eye and ear as well as palate" is describing "the temptations to excess at a feast".

Hope that helps.

[sunnyy]

hello.

[Jackson Richardson]

Hello. It's a bit overcast here this morning in South London but I hope it is fine where you are.

What's your question?

[Gladys]

"Do not think too hardly of Philip....The temptations of beauty are much dwelt upon, but I fancy they
only bear the same relation to those of ugliness, as the temptation to excess at a feast, where the delights
are varied for eye and ear as well as palate, bears to the temptations that assail the desperation of hunger.
Does not the Hunger Tower stand as the type of the utmost trial to what is human in us?"

In Dante's Inferno, Ugolino is locked away with his sons in a Pisan tower called the Eagles’ Tower, but—after his death—known by the nickname of the Hunger Tower. Once his sons have starved to death, one by one, the dying father turned blind is finally tempted to cannibalism. It is truly horrific: http://www.shmoop.com/inferno/canto-xxxiii-summary.html

Likewise the humpbacked Phillip Wakem experiences the worst of life. As temptations of starvation are much worse than those of a cornucopia, so temptations of ugliness exceed those of beauty. Philip is ugly! Out of desperation, his treatment of the departing Maggie is less than gracious but can be understood in the same way as Ugolino's temptation to cannibalism. With the narrator, our deepest sympathies should extend to poor Philip Wakem, in love with the unattainable.

[Sahand]

Thanks.

[Sahand]

So we can conclude that "temptations of beauty" means the temptations which one has when beauty is the matter of the course or when he/she is beautiful and in the same way way there are temptations which arise in the course of ugliness. I mean our temptations in the condition of negative is severer than temptations in the condition of positive categories. Is my understanding right?

[Gladys]

I mean our temptations in the condition of negative is severer than temptations in the condition of positive categories. Is my understanding right?

What you say is not wrong but rather misses the narrator's purpose. Just as the moving story of the deaths of Ugolino and his sons is high tragedy, Phillip Wakem's fate, far from the limelight, is tragic in its peculiar way.


Does not the Hunger Tower stand as the type of the utmost trial to what is human in us?

Philip had never been soothed by that mother's love which flows out to us in the greater abundance because our need is greater, which clings to us the more tenderly because we are the less likely to be winners in the game of life; and the sense of his father's affection and indulgence toward him was marred by the keener perception of his father's faults. Kept aloof from all practical life as Philip had been, and by nature half feminine in sensitiveness, he had some of the woman's intolerant repulsion toward worldliness and the deliberate pursuit of sensual enjoyment; and this one strong natural tie in his life,--his relation as a son,--was like an aching limb to him. Perhaps there is inevitably something morbid in a human being who is in any way unfavorably excepted from ordinary conditions, until the good force has had time to triumph; and it has rarely had time for that at two-and-twenty. That force was present in Philip in much strength, but the sun himself looks feeble through the morning mists.