Review of A Monument to the Memory of George Eliot. Edith J. Simcox\u27s Autobiography of a Shirtmaker

The intensity of Edith Jemima Simcox\u27s passion for George Eliot has been known to a twentieth- century reading public since the publication of K. A. McKenzie\u27s Edith Simcox and George Eliot in 1961. McKenzie\u27s book is a combination of summary and quotation of a manuscript acquired by the Bodleian Library in 1958, This manuscript, entitled The Autobiography of a Shirtmaker, is a journal kept by Simcox from 10 May 1876 until 29 January 1900. Gordon Haight wrote the introduction to McKenzie\u27s book, relied on the Simcox manuscript in his 1968 biography of Eliot, and printed lengthy passages from it in The George Eliot Letters, Vol. IX (1978). Yet, as Constance M. Fulmer notes, more than half of Simcox\u27s journal \u27has never been published in any form\u27 (ix). Fulmer and co-editor Margaret E. Barfield have produced a new annotated edition of this intriguing text which will be of interest to readers of George Eliot, scholars of late nineteenth-century culture, and to historians of women\u27s sexuality. Among the many advantages to the recovery of this unique work by two women scholars is its record of one nineteenth-century woman\u27s passion for another woman. While I wish that Fulmer and Barfield had done more in their introduction to suggest the implications of their own scholarship, the complete Autobiography is now available to be read through the lens of recent revelations about and interpretations of Victorian women\u27s sexuality as focused by historians like Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, Lillian Faderman, Martha Vicinus, and Sheila Jeffreys among others. Writing before this important research, Haight cautioned readers against seeing the obvious: \u27The Victorians\u27 conception of love between those of the same sex cannot be fairly understood by an age steeped in Freud. Where they saw only beautiful friendship, the modern reader suspects perversion\u27 (McKenzie, xv). This defensive pronouncement is particularly curious when we consider that Simcox herself struggled with what she called her \u27unwholesome reveries\u27 (16) and \u27unhealthy dreams\u27 (45). Haight compares Simcox to fictional characters created by Henry James and George Meredith in The Bostonians and Diana of the Crossways. These male authors have dissected \u27the twisted psychological strands without apparent horror of what the schoolgirl today labels Lesbianism\u27 (xv). In fiction, as with Simcox, \u27we must avoid reading back interpretations that could never have been suspected when they were written\u27 (McKenzie, xvi)

George Eliot’s Moral Aesthetic: Compelling Contradictions

George Eliot’s serious readers have been intrigued by the fact that she declared that she had lost her faith in God and had renounced her hope for a traditional Christian heaven and yet she continued to preach her own version of morality in everything she wrote, to hope for an immortality which allowed her to join an invisible choir which would influence generations to come, and to be concerned about the moral growth of her characters. This is only one of the many compelling contradictions in her life and in her artistry.https://digitalcommons.pepperdine.edu/englishbooks/1001/thumbnail.jp

Thrombin-receptor antagonist vorapaxar in acute coronary syndromes

BACKGROUND Vorapaxar is a new oral protease-activated–receptor 1 (PAR-1) antagonist that inhibits thrombin-induced platelet activation. METHODS In this multinational, double-blind, randomized trial, we compared vorapaxar with placebo in 12,944 patients who had acute coronary syndromes without ST-segment elevation. The primary end point was a composite of death from cardiovascular causes, myocardial infarction, stroke, recurrent ischemia with rehospitalization, or urgent coronary revascularization. RESULTS Follow-up in the trial was terminated early after a safety review. After a median follow-up of 502 days (interquartile range, 349 to 667), the primary end point occurred in 1031 of 6473 patients receiving vorapaxar versus 1102 of 6471 patients receiving placebo (Kaplan–Meier 2-year rate, 18.5% vs. 19.9%; hazard ratio, 0.92; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.85 to 1.01; P = 0.07). A composite of death from cardiovascular causes, myocardial infarction, or stroke occurred in 822 patients in the vorapaxar group versus 910 in the placebo group (14.7% and 16.4%, respectively; hazard ratio, 0.89; 95% CI, 0.81 to 0.98; P = 0.02). Rates of moderate and severe bleeding were 7.2% in the vorapaxar group and 5.2% in the placebo group (hazard ratio, 1.35; 95% CI, 1.16 to 1.58; P<0.001). Intracranial hemorrhage rates were 1.1% and 0.2%, respectively (hazard ratio, 3.39; 95% CI, 1.78 to 6.45; P<0.001). Rates of nonhemorrhagic adverse events were similar in the two groups. CONCLUSIONS In patients with acute coronary syndromes, the addition of vorapaxar to standard therapy did not significantly reduce the primary composite end point but significantly increased the risk of major bleeding, including intracranial hemorrhage