ABSTRACT
The irony is reinforced by the analeptic structure: the beginning of the novel – the West Country of 1872 – is spatially and temporally distanced from the bulk of the plot. This strain between expectation and reality is present throughout the passage. From London, Yorkshire appears an intangible fantasy rather than a recent memory. The railway station, connecting the city to the country, is the only aspect George Gissing can retain of the experience. Alongside the continued strain of idealisation in the rural setting, Gissing's narratives incorporate other aspects that jar with the prescriptive register of mimesis. In Gissing, the use of the pastoral mode to describe the rural is often complicated, ironic and deconstructive. Within the depictions of London, an alternative view of the country emerges in the form of urban pastoral that, as a site of desire, contains the possibility of escape.
