George Eliot was a woman who wrote full-grown novels for men.
Other women have done and are doing notable work in prose fiction—Jane Austen, George Sand, Charlotte Brontë, Mrs. Stowe, Margaret Deland, Edith Wharton, Katharine Fullerton Gerould, Mrs. Humphry Ward—the list might easily be extended, but it would delay us from the purpose of this chapter. Let me rather make a general salute1 to all the sisterhood who have risen above the indignity2 of being called “authoresses,” and, without pursuing perilous3 comparisons, go directly to the subject in hand.
What was it that enabled George Eliot to enter the field of the English novel at a time when Dickens and Thackeray were at the height of their fame, and win a place in the same class with them?
It was certainly not the hide-and-seek of the sex
[134]
of the new writer under a pseudonym4. You remember, opinions were divided on this question. Carlyle and Thackeray thought that the author of Scenes of Clerical Life was a man. Dickens was sure that it was a woman. But a mystification of this kind has no interest apart from the primary value of the works of the unidentified writer in question. Nor does it last long as an advertisement, unless the following books excel the first; and, in that case, the secret is sure to be soon discovered.
George Eliot’s success and distinction as a novelist were due to three things: first, the preliminary and rather obvious advantage of having genius; second, a method of thinking and writing which is commonly (though perhaps arrogantly) called masculine; third, a quickness of insight into certain things, a warmth of sympathy for suffering, and an instinct of sacrifice which we still regard (we hope rightly) as feminine. A man for logic6, a woman for feeling, a genius for creative power—that was a great alliance. But the womanhood kept the priority without which it would not only have died out,
[135]
but also have endangered, in dying, the other qualities. Dickens was right when he said of certain touches in the work of this pseudonymous writer: “If they originated with no woman, I believe that no man ever before had the art of making himself mentally so like a woman since the world began.”
George Eliot’s profile resembled Savonarola’s. He was one of her heroes. But she was not his brother. She was his sister in the spirit.
Her essential femininity was the reason why the drawing of her women surpassed the drawing of her men. It was more intimate, more revealing, more convincing. She knew women better. She painted them of many types and classes—from the peasant maid to the well-born lady, from the selfish white cat to the generous white swan-sister; from the narrow-minded Rosamund to the deep-hearted, broad-minded Romola; all types, I think, but one—the lewdly8 carnal Circe. In all her books, with perhaps a single exception, it is a woman who stands out most clearly from the carefully studied and often complex background as the figure of interest. And even in that one it is the slight form of Eppie, the golden-hearted
[136]
girl who was sent to save old Silas Marner from melancholy9 madness, that shines brightest in the picture.
The finest of her women—finest not in the sense of being faultless, but of having in them most of that wonderful sacrificial quality which Goethe called das ewig Weibliche—were those upon whose spiritual portraits George Eliot spent her most loving care and her most graphic10 skill.
She shows them almost always in the revealing light of love. But she does not dwell meticulously11 on the symptoms or the course of the merely physical attraction. She knows that it is there; she confesses that it is potent12. But it seems to her, (as indeed it really is,) far more uniform and less interesting than the meaning of love in the soul of a woman as daughter, sister, sweetheart, wife. Were it not for that inward significance there would be little to differentiate13 the physical act from the mating of the lower animals—an affair so common and casual that it merits less attention than some writers give it. But in the inner life of thought and emotion, in a woman’s intellectual and moral nature,—there
[137]
love has its mystery and its power, there it brings deepest joy or sharpest sorrow, there it strengthens or maims.
It is because George Eliot knows this and reveals it with extraordinary clearness that her books have an especial value. Other qualities they have, of course, and very high qualities. But this is their proper and peculiar14 excellence15, and the source, if I mistake not, of their strongest appeal to sanely16 thinking men.
The Man Who Understood Woman is the title of a recent clever trivial story. But of course such a man is a myth, an impostor, or a self-deluder. He makes a preposterous17 claim.
Thackeray and Dickens, for example, made no such pretension18. Some of their women are admirably drawn19; they are very lovable, or very despicable, as the case may be; but they are not completely convincing. Thackeray comes nearer than Dickens, and George Meredith, I think, much nearer than either of the others. But in George Eliot we feel that we are listening to one who does understand. Her women, in their different types, reveal something
[138]
of that thinking, willing, feeling other-half of humanity with whom man makes the journey of life. They do not cover all the possibilities of variation in the feminine, for these are infinite, but they are real women, and so they have an interest for real men.
Let us take it for granted that we know enough of the details of George Eliot’s life to enable us to understand and appreciate certain things in her novels. Such biographical knowledge is illuminating20 in the study of the works of any writer. The author of a book is not an algebraic quantity nor a strange monster, but a human being with certain features and a certain life-history.
But, after all, the promotion21 of literary analysis is not the object of these chapters. Plain reading, and the pleasure of it, is what I have in mind. For that cause I love most of George Eliot’s novels, and am ready to maintain that they are worthy22 to be loved. And so, even if my “taken for granted” a few lines above should not be altogether accurate in these days of ignorant contempt of all that is
[139]
“Victorian,” I may still go ahead to speak of her books as they are in themselves: strong, fine, rewarding pieces of English fiction: that is what they would remain, no matter who had written them.
It must be admitted at once that they are not adapted to readers who like to be spared the trouble of thinking while they read. They do not belong to the class of massage-fiction, Turkish-bath novels. They require a certain amount of intellectual exercise; and for this they return, it seems to me, an adequate recompense in the pleasurable sense of quickened mental activity and vigour23.
But this admission must not be taken to imply that they are obscure, intricate, enigmatical, “tough reading,” like the later books of George Meredith and Henry James, in which a minimum of meaning is hidden in a maximum of obfuscated24 verbiage25, and the reader is invited to a tedious game of hunt-the-slipper. On the contrary, George Eliot at her best is a very clear writer—decidedly not shallow, nor superficial, nor hasty,—like the running comment which is supposed to illuminate26 the scenes in a moving-picture show,—but intentionally27 lucid28 and
[140]
perspicuous. Having a story to tell, she takes pains to tell it so that you can follow it, not only in its outward, but also in its inward movement. Having certain characters to depict29 (and almost always mixed characters of good and evil mingled31 and conflicting as in real life), she is careful to draw them so that you shall feel their reality and take an interest in their strifes and adventures.
They are distinctly persons, capable of making their own choice between the worse and the better reason, and thereafter influenced by the consequences of that choice, which, if repeated, becomes a habit of moral victory or defeat. They are not puppets in, the hands of an inscrutable Fate, like most of the figures in the books of the modern Russian novelists and their imitators. What do I care for the ever-so realistically painted marionettes in the fiction of Messrs. Gawky, Popoff, Dropoff, and Slumpoff? What interest have I in the minute articulations of the dingy33 automatons34 of Mijnheer Couperus, or the dismal35, despicable figures who are pulled through the pages of Mr. Samuel Butler’s The Way of All Flesh? A claim on compassion36 they
[141]
might have if they were alive. But being, by the avowal37 of their creators, nothing more than imaginary bundles of sensation, helpless playthings of irresistible38 hereditary39 impulse and entangling40 destiny, their story and their fate leave me cold. What does it matter what becomes of them? They can neither be saved nor damned. They can only be drifted. There is no more human interest in them than there is in the predestined saints and foredoomed sinners of a certain type of Calvinistic theology.
But this is not George Eliot’s view of life. It is not to her “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing.” Within the fixed41 circle of its stern natural and moral laws there is a hidden field of conflict where the soul is free to discern and choose its own cause, and to fight for it or betray it. However small that field may be, while it exists life has a meaning, and personalities42 are real, and the results of their striving or surrendering, though rarely seen complete or final, are worth following and thinking about. Thus George Eliot’s people—at least the majority of them—have the
[142]
human touch which justifies43 narrative44 and comment. We follow the fortunes of Dinah Morris and of Maggie Tulliver, of Romola, and of Dorothea Brooke—yes, and of Hetty Sorrel and Rosamund Vincy—precisely45 because we feel that they are real women and that the turning of their ways will reveal the secret of their hearts.
It is a mistake to think (as a recent admirable essay of Professor W. L. Cross seems to imply) that the books of George Eliot are characteristically novels of argument or propaganda. Once only, or perhaps twice, she yielded to that temptation and spoiled her story. But for the rest she kept clear of the snare46 of Tendenz.
Purpose-novels, like advertisements, belong in the temporary department. As certain goods and wares47 go out of date, and the often eloquent48 announcements that commended them suddenly disappear; even so the “burning questions” of the hour and age burn out, and the solutions of them presented in the form of fiction fall down with the other ashes. They have served their purpose, well or ill, and their transient importance is ended.
[143]
What endures, if anything, is the human story vividly49 told, the human characters graphically50 depicted51. These have a permanent value. These belong to literature. Here I would place Adam Bede and Silas Marner and The Mill on the Floss and Middlemarch, because they deal with problems which never grow old; but not Robert Elsmere, because it deals chiefly with a defunct52 controversy53 in Biblical criticism.
George Eliot was thirty-eight years old when she made the amazing discovery that she was by nature, not what she had thought herself, a philosophical54 essayist and a translator of arid55 German treatises56 against revealed religion, but something very different—a novelist of human souls, and especially of the souls of women. It was the noteworthy success of her three long short stories, Amos Barton, Mr. Gilfil’s Love Story, and Janet’s Repentance57, printed in Blackwood’s Magazine in 1857, that revealed her to herself and to the world.
“Depend upon it, [she says to her imaginary reader in the first of these stories,] you would gain unspeakably if you would learn with me to see
[144]
something of the poetry and the pathos58, the tragedy and the comedy, lying in the experience of the human soul that looks out through dull gray eyes and speaks in a voice of quite ordinary tones.”
It was the interior drama of human life that attracted her interest and moved her heart with pity and fear, laughter and love. She found it for the most part in what we should call mediocre60 surroundings and on rather a humble61 and obscure stage. But what she found was not mediocre. It was the same discovery that Wordsworth made:
“A grandeur62 in the beatings of the heart.”
By this I do not mean to say that a close study of the humanness of human nature, a searching contemplation of character, an acute and penetrating63 psychological analysis is all that there is in her novels. This is her predominant interest, beyond a doubt. She belongs to the school of Hawthorne, Henry James, Thomas Hardy—realists or romancers of the interior life. But she has other interests; and there are other things to reward us in the reading of her books.
[145]
There is, first of all, an admirable skill in the setting of her stories. No other novelist has described English midland landscape, towns, and hamlets, better than she. No other writer has given the rich, history-saturated scenery of Florence as well.
She is careful also not to exclude from her stage that messenger of relief and contrast whom George Meredith calls “the comic spirit.” Shakespeare’s clowns, wonderful as some of them are, seem at times like supernumeraries. They come in to make a “diversion.” But George Eliot’s rustic64 wits and conscious or unconscious humourists belong to the story. Mrs. Poyser and Bartle Massey, Mrs. Glegg and Mrs. Tulliver and Bob Jakin, could not be spared.
And then, her stories are really stories. They have action. They move; though sometimes, it must be confessed, they move slowly. Not only do the characters develop, one way or the other, but the plot also develops. Sometimes it is very simple, as in Silas Marner; sometimes it is extremely complicated, as in Middlemarch, where three love-stories are braided together. One thing it never is—theatrical.
[146]
Yet at times it moves into an intense scene, like the trial of Hetty Sorrel or the death of Tito Melema, in which the very essence of tragedy is concentrated.
From the success of Scenes of Clerical Life George Eliot went on steadily65 with her work in fiction, never turning aside, never pausing even, except when her health compelled, or when she needed time to fill her mind and heart with a new subject. She did not write rapidly, nor are her books easy to read in a hurry.
It was an extraordinary series: Adam Bede in 1859, The Mill on the Floss in 1860, Silas Marner in 1861, Romola in 1863, Felix Holt, the Radical66 in 1866, Middlemarch in 1871, Daniel Deronda in 1876; no padding, no “seconds,” each book apparently67 more successful, certainly more famous, than its predecessor68. How could one woman produce so much closely wrought69, finely finished work? Of what sturdy mental race were the serious readers who welcomed it and found delight in it?
Mr. Oscar Browning of Cambridge said that Daniel Deronda was the climax70, “the sun and glory
[147]
of George Eliot’s art.” From that academic judgment71 I venture to dissent72. It is a great book, no doubt, the work of a powerful intellect. But to me it was at the first reading, and is still, a tiresome73 book. Tediousness, which is a totally different thing from seriousness, is the unpardonable defect in a novel. It may be my own fault, but Deronda seems to me something of a prig. Now a man may be a prig without sin, but he ought not to take up too much room. Deronda takes up too much room. And Gwendolen Harleth, who dressed by preference in sea-green, seems to me to have a soul of the same colour—a psychological mermaid74. She is unconvincing. I cannot love her. The vivid little Jewess, Mirah, is the only character with charm in the book.
Middlemarch is noteworthy for its extraordinary richness of human observation and the unexcelled truthfulness75 of some of its portraits. Mr. Isaac Casaubon is the living image of the gray-minded scholar and gentleman,—as delicately drawn as one of Miss Cecelia Beaux’ portraits of aged59, learned, wrinkled men. Rosamund Vincy is the typical
[148]
“daughter of the horse-leech” in respectable clothes and surroundings. Dorothea Brooke is one of George Eliot’s finest sacrificial heroines:
“A perfect woman, nobly plann’d.”
The book, as a whole, seems to me to have the defect of superabundance. There is too much of it. It is like one of the late William Frith’s large canvases, “The Derby Day,” or “The Railway Station.” It is constructed with skill, and full of rich material, but it does not compose. You cannot see the people for the crowd. Yet there is hardly a corner of the story in which you will not find something worth while.
Felix Holt, the Radical is marred76, at least for me, by a fault of another kind. It is a novel of problem, of purpose. I do not care for problem-novels, unless the problem is alive, and even then I do not care very much for political economy in that form. It is too easy for the author to prove any proposition by attaching it to a noble character, or to disprove any theory by giving it an unworthy advocate. English radicalism77 of 1832 has quite passed away,
[149]
or gone into the Coalition78 Cabinet. All that saves Felix Holt now (as it seems to me, who read novels primarily for pleasure) is the lovely figure of Esther Lyon, and her old father, a preacher who really was good.
Following the path still backward, we come to something altogether different. Romola is a historical romance on the grand scale. In the central background is the heroic figure of Savonarola, saintly but not impeccable; in the middle distance, a crowd of Renaissance79 people immersed in the rich and bloody80 turmoil81 of that age; in the foreground, the sharp contrast of two epic30 personalities—Tito Melema, the incarnation of smooth, easy-going selfishness which never refuses a pleasure nor accepts a duty; and Romola, the splendid embodiment of pure love in self-surrendering womanhood. The shameful82 end of Tito, swept away by the flooded river Arno and finally choked to death by the father whom he had disowned and wronged, has in it the sombre tone of Fate. But the end of the book is not defeat; it is triumph. Romola, victor through selfless courage and patience, saves and protects
[150]
the deserted83 mistress and children of her faithless husband. In the epilogue we see her like Notre Dame84 de Secours, throned in mercy and crowned with compassion.
Listen to her as she talks to Tito’s son in the loggia looking over Florence to the heights beyond Fiesole.
“‘What is it, Lillo?’ said Romola, pulling his hair back from his brow. Lillo was a handsome lad, but his features were turning out to be more massive and less regular than his father’s. The blood of the Tuscan peasant was in his veins85.
“‘Mamma Romola, what am I to be?’ he said, well contented86 that there was a prospect87 of talking till it would be too late to con5 Spirto gentil any longer.
“‘What should you like to be, Lillo? You might be a scholar. My father was a scholar, you know, and taught me a great deal. That is the reason why I can teach you.’
“‘Yes,’ said Lillo, rather hesitatingly. ‘But he is old and blind in the picture. Did he get a great deal of glory?’
[151]
“‘Not much, Lillo. The world was not always very kind to him, and he saw meaner men than himself put into higher places, because they could flatter and say what was false. And then his dear son thought it right to leave him and become a monk88; and after that, my father, being blind and lonely, felt unable to do the things that would have made his learning of greater use to men, so that he might still have lived in his works after he was in his grave.’
“‘I should not like that sort of life,’ said Lillo. ‘I should like to be something that would make me a great man, and very happy besides—something that would not hinder me from having a good deal of pleasure.’
“‘That is not easy, my Lillo. It is only a poor sort of happiness that could ever come by caring very much about our own narrow pleasures. We can only have the highest happiness, such as goes along with being a great man, by having wide thoughts, and feeling for the rest of the world as well as ourselves; and this sort of happiness often brings so much pain with it, that we can only tell
[152]
it from pain by its being what we would choose before everything else, because our souls see it is good. 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. My father had the greatness that belongs to integrity; he chose poverty and obscurity rather than falsehood. And there was Fra Girolamo—you know why I keep to-morrow sacred: he had the greatness which belongs to a life spent in struggling against powerful wrong, and in trying to raise men to the highest deeds they are capable of. And so, my Lillo, if you mean to act nobly and seek to know the best things God has put within reach of men, you must learn to fix your mind on that end, and not on what will happen to you because of it. And remember, if you were to choose something lower, and make it the rule of your life to seek your own pleasure and escape from what is disagreeable, calamity89 might come just the same; and it would be calamity falling on a base mind, which is the one
[153]
form of sorrow that has no balm in it, and that may well make a man say, “It would have been better for me if I had never been born.” I will tell you something, Lillo.’
“Romola paused for a moment. She had taken Lillo’s cheeks between her hands, and his young eyes were meeting hers.
“‘There was a man to whom I was very near, so that I could see a great deal of his life, who made almost every one fond of him, for he was young, and clever, and beautiful, and his manners to all were gentle and kind. I believe, when I first knew him, he never thought of anything cruel or base. But because he tried to slip away from everything that was unpleasant, and cared for nothing else so much as his own safety, he came at last to commit some of the basest deeds—such as make men infamous90. He denied his father, and left him to misery91; he betrayed every trust that was reposed92 in him, that he might keep himself safe and get rich and prosperous. Yet calamity overtook him.’
“Again Romola paused. Her voice was unsteady, and Lillo was looking up at her with awed93 wonder.
[154]
“‘Another time, my Lillo—I will tell you another time. See, there are our old Piero di Cosimo and Nello coming up the Borgo Pinti, bringing us their flowers. Let us go and wave our hands to them, that they may know we see them.’”
Hardly one of George Eliot’s stories has a conventional “happy ending.” Yet they leave us not depressed94, but strengthened to endure and invigorated to endeavour. In this they differ absolutely from the pessimistic novels of the present hour, which not only leave a bad taste in the mouth, but also a sense of futility95 in the heart.
Let me turn now to her first two novels, which still seem to me her best. Bear in mind, I am not formulating96 academic theories, nor pronouncing ex cathedrâ judgments97, but simply recording98 for the consideration of other readers certain personal observations and reactions.
Adam Bede is a novel of rustic tragedy in which some of the characters are drawn directly from memory. Adam is a partial portrait of George Eliot’s father, and Dinah Morris a sketch99 of her aunt, a Methodist woman preacher. There is plenty of comic relief in the story, admirably done.
[155]
Take the tongue duel100 between Bartle Massey, the sharp-spoken, kind-hearted bachelor school-master, and Mrs. Poyser, the humorous, pungent102, motherly wife of the old farmer.
“‘What!’ said Bartle, with an air of disgust. ‘Was there a woman concerned? Then I give you up, Adam.’
“‘But it’s a woman you’n spoke101 well on, Bartle,’ said Mr. Poyser. ‘Come, now, you canna draw back; you said once as women wouldna ha’ been a bad invention if they’d all been like Dinah.’
“‘I meant her voice, man—I meant her voice, that was all,’ said Bartle. ‘I can bear to hear her speak without wanting to put wool in my ears. As for other things, I dare say she’s like the rest o’ the women—thinks two and two ’ull come to make five, if she cries and bothers enough about it.’
“‘Ay, ay!’ said Mrs. Poyser; ‘one ’ud think, an’ hear some folks talk, as the men war ’cute enough to count the corns in a bag o’ wheat wi’ only smelling at it. They can see through a barn door, they can. Perhaps that’s the reason they can see so little o’ this side on’t.’
“‘Ah!’ said Bartle, sneeringly103, ‘the women are
[156]
quick enough—they’re quick enough. They know the rights of a story before they hear it, and can tell a man what his thoughts are before he knows ’em himself.’
“‘Like enough,’ said Mrs. Poyser; ‘for the men are mostly so slow, their thoughts overrun ’em, an’ they can only catch ’em by the tail. I can count a stocking-top while a man’s getting’s tongue ready; an’ when he outs wi’ his speech at last, there’s little broth7 to be made on’t. It’s your dead chicks take the longest hatchin’. Howiver, I’m not denyin’ the women are foolish: God Almighty104 made ’em to match the men.’
“‘Match!’ said Bartle; ‘ay, as vinegar matches one’s teeth. If a man says a word, his wife’ll match it with a contradiction; if he’s a mind for hot meat, his wife’ll match it with cold bacon; if he laughs, she’ll match him with whimpering. She’s such a match as the horsefly is to th’ horse: she’s got the right venom105 to sting him with—the right venom to sting him with.’
“‘What dost say to that?’ said Mr. Poyser, throwing himself back and looking merrily at his wife.
[157]
“‘Say!’ answered Mrs. Poyser, with dangerous fire kindling106 in her eye; ‘why, I say as some folks’ tongues are like the clocks as run on strikin’, not to tell you the time o’ the day, but because there’s summat wrong i’ their own inside.’ ...”
The plot, as in Scott’s Heart of Midlothian, turns on a case of seduction and child murder, and the contrast between Effie and Jeannie Deans has its parallel in the stronger contrast between Hetty Sorrel and Dinah Morris. Hetty looked as if she were “made of roses”; but she was, in Mrs. Poyser’s phrase, “no better nor a cherry wi’ a hard stone inside it.” Dinah’s human beauty of face and voice was the true reflection of her inward life which
“cast a beam on the outward shape,
The unpolluted temple of the mind,
And turned it by degrees to the soul’s essence.”
The crisis of the book comes in the prison, where Dinah wrestles107 for the soul of Hetty—a scene as passionate108 and moving as any in fiction. Dinah triumphs, not by her own might, but by the sheer power and beauty of the Christian109 faith and love which she embodies110.
[158]
In George Eliot’s novels you will find some passages of stinging and well-merited satire111 on the semi-pagan, conventional religion of middle-class orthodoxy in England of the nineteenth century—“proud respectability in a gig of unfashionable build; worldliness without side-dishes”—read the chapter on “A Variation of Protestantism Unknown to Bossuet,” in The Mill on the Floss. But you will not find a single page or paragraph that would draw or drive the reader away from real Christianity. On the contrary, she has expressed the very secret of its appeal to the human heart through the words and conduct of some of her best characters. They do not argue; they utter and show the meaning of religion. On me the effect of her books is a deepened sense of the inevitable112 need of Christ and his gospel to sustain and nourish the high morality of courage and compassion, patience, and hope, which she so faithfully teaches.
The truth is, George Eliot lived in the afterglow of Christian faith. Rare souls are capable of doing that. But mankind at large needs the sunrise.
The Mill on the Floss is partly an autobiographic
[159]
romance. Maggie Tulliver’s character resembles George Eliot in her youth. The contrast between the practical and the ideal, the conflict between love and duty in the heart of a girl, belong to those problematische Naturen, as Goethe called them, which may taste keen joys but cannot escape sharp sorrows. The centre of the story lies in Maggie’s strong devotion to her father and to her brother Tom—a person not altogether unlike the “elder brother” in the parable—in strife32 with her love for Philip, the son of the family enemy. Tom ruthlessly commands his sister to choose between breaking with him and giving up her lover. Maggie, after a bitter struggle, chooses her brother. Would a real woman do that? Yes, I have known some very real women who have done it, in one case with a tragic113 result.
The original title of this book (and the right one) was Sister Maggie. Yet we can see why George Eliot chose the other name. The little river Floss, so tranquil114 in its regular tidal flow, yet capable of such fierce and sudden outbreaks, runs through the book from beginning to end. It is a mysterious
[160]
type of the ineluctable power of Nature in man’s mortal drama.
In the last chapter, when the flood comes, and the erring115 sister who loved her brother so tenderly, rescues him who loved her so cruelly from the ruined mill, the frail116 skiff which carries them clasped heart to heart, reconciled in that revealing moment, goes down in the senseless irresistible rush of waters.
It is not a “bad ending.” The sister’s love triumphs. Such a close was inevitable for such a story. But it is not a conclusion. It cries out for immortality117.
On the art of George Eliot judgments have differed. Mr. Oscar Browning, a respectable authority, thinks highly of it. Mr. W. C. Brownell, a far better critic, indeed one of the very best, thinks less favourably118 of it, says that it is too intellectual; that the development and conduct of her characters are too logical and consistent; that the element of surprize, which is always present in life, is lacking in her people. “Our attention,” he writes, “is so concentrated on what they think that we hardly know how they feel, or whether ... they
[161]
feel at all.” This criticism does not seem to me altogether just. Certainly there is no lack of surprize in Maggie Tulliver’s temporary infatuation with the handsome, light-minded Stephen Guest, or in Dorothea Brooke’s marriage to that heady young butterfly, Will Ladislaw. These things certainly were not arrived at by logical consistency119. Nor can one lay his hand on his heart and say that there is no feeling in the chapter where the fugitive120 Romola comes as Madonna to the mountain village, stricken by pestilence121, or in the passage where Dinah Morris strives for Hetty’s soul in prison.
George Eliot herself tells us the purpose of her art—it is verity122.
“It is for this rare, precious quality of truthfulness that I delight in many Dutch paintings, which lofty-minded people despise.... All honour and reverence123 to the divine beauty of form! Let us cultivate it to the utmost in men, women, and children—in our gardens and in our homes. But let us love that other beauty, too, which lies in no secret of proportion, but in the secret of deep human sympathy.”
It is Rembrandt, then, rather than Titian, who
[162]
is her chosen painter. But she does not often attain124 his marvellous chiaroscuro125.
Her style is clear and almost always firm in drawing, though deficient126 in colour. It is full of meaning, almost over-scrupulous in defining precisely what she wishes to express. Here and there it flashes into a wise saying, a sparkling epigram. At other times, especially in her later books, it spreads out and becomes too diffuse127, too slow, like Sir Walter Scott’s. But it never repels128 by vulgar smartness, nor perplexes by vagueness and artificial obscurity. It serves her purpose well—to convey the results of her scrutiny129 of the inner life and her loving observation of the outer life in its humblest forms. In these respects it is admirable and satisfying. And it is her own—she does not imitate, nor write according to a theory.
Her general view of human nature is not essentially130 different from that expressed in a passage which I quoted from Thackeray in the previous chapter. We are none of us “irreproachable characters.” We are “mixed human beings.” Therefore she wishes to tell her stories “in such a way as
[163]
to call forth131 tolerant judgment, pity, and sympathy.”
As I began so let me end this chapter—with a word on women. For myself, I think it wise and prudent132 to maintain with Plutarch that virtue133 in man and woman is one and the same. Yet there is a difference between the feminine and the masculine virtues134. This opinion Plutarch sets forth and illustrates135 in his brief histories, and George Eliot in her novels. But of the virtues of women she gives more and finer examples.
Other women have done and are doing notable work in prose fiction—Jane Austen, George Sand, Charlotte Brontë, Mrs. Stowe, Margaret Deland, Edith Wharton, Katharine Fullerton Gerould, Mrs. Humphry Ward—the list might easily be extended, but it would delay us from the purpose of this chapter. Let me rather make a general salute1 to all the sisterhood who have risen above the indignity2 of being called “authoresses,” and, without pursuing perilous3 comparisons, go directly to the subject in hand.
What was it that enabled George Eliot to enter the field of the English novel at a time when Dickens and Thackeray were at the height of their fame, and win a place in the same class with them?
It was certainly not the hide-and-seek of the sex
[134]
of the new writer under a pseudonym4. You remember, opinions were divided on this question. Carlyle and Thackeray thought that the author of Scenes of Clerical Life was a man. Dickens was sure that it was a woman. But a mystification of this kind has no interest apart from the primary value of the works of the unidentified writer in question. Nor does it last long as an advertisement, unless the following books excel the first; and, in that case, the secret is sure to be soon discovered.
George Eliot’s success and distinction as a novelist were due to three things: first, the preliminary and rather obvious advantage of having genius; second, a method of thinking and writing which is commonly (though perhaps arrogantly) called masculine; third, a quickness of insight into certain things, a warmth of sympathy for suffering, and an instinct of sacrifice which we still regard (we hope rightly) as feminine. A man for logic6, a woman for feeling, a genius for creative power—that was a great alliance. But the womanhood kept the priority without which it would not only have died out,
[135]
but also have endangered, in dying, the other qualities. Dickens was right when he said of certain touches in the work of this pseudonymous writer: “If they originated with no woman, I believe that no man ever before had the art of making himself mentally so like a woman since the world began.”
George Eliot’s profile resembled Savonarola’s. He was one of her heroes. But she was not his brother. She was his sister in the spirit.
Her essential femininity was the reason why the drawing of her women surpassed the drawing of her men. It was more intimate, more revealing, more convincing. She knew women better. She painted them of many types and classes—from the peasant maid to the well-born lady, from the selfish white cat to the generous white swan-sister; from the narrow-minded Rosamund to the deep-hearted, broad-minded Romola; all types, I think, but one—the lewdly8 carnal Circe. In all her books, with perhaps a single exception, it is a woman who stands out most clearly from the carefully studied and often complex background as the figure of interest. And even in that one it is the slight form of Eppie, the golden-hearted
[136]
girl who was sent to save old Silas Marner from melancholy9 madness, that shines brightest in the picture.
The finest of her women—finest not in the sense of being faultless, but of having in them most of that wonderful sacrificial quality which Goethe called das ewig Weibliche—were those upon whose spiritual portraits George Eliot spent her most loving care and her most graphic10 skill.
She shows them almost always in the revealing light of love. But she does not dwell meticulously11 on the symptoms or the course of the merely physical attraction. She knows that it is there; she confesses that it is potent12. But it seems to her, (as indeed it really is,) far more uniform and less interesting than the meaning of love in the soul of a woman as daughter, sister, sweetheart, wife. Were it not for that inward significance there would be little to differentiate13 the physical act from the mating of the lower animals—an affair so common and casual that it merits less attention than some writers give it. But in the inner life of thought and emotion, in a woman’s intellectual and moral nature,—there
[137]
love has its mystery and its power, there it brings deepest joy or sharpest sorrow, there it strengthens or maims.
It is because George Eliot knows this and reveals it with extraordinary clearness that her books have an especial value. Other qualities they have, of course, and very high qualities. But this is their proper and peculiar14 excellence15, and the source, if I mistake not, of their strongest appeal to sanely16 thinking men.
The Man Who Understood Woman is the title of a recent clever trivial story. But of course such a man is a myth, an impostor, or a self-deluder. He makes a preposterous17 claim.
Thackeray and Dickens, for example, made no such pretension18. Some of their women are admirably drawn19; they are very lovable, or very despicable, as the case may be; but they are not completely convincing. Thackeray comes nearer than Dickens, and George Meredith, I think, much nearer than either of the others. But in George Eliot we feel that we are listening to one who does understand. Her women, in their different types, reveal something
[138]
of that thinking, willing, feeling other-half of humanity with whom man makes the journey of life. They do not cover all the possibilities of variation in the feminine, for these are infinite, but they are real women, and so they have an interest for real men.
Let us take it for granted that we know enough of the details of George Eliot’s life to enable us to understand and appreciate certain things in her novels. Such biographical knowledge is illuminating20 in the study of the works of any writer. The author of a book is not an algebraic quantity nor a strange monster, but a human being with certain features and a certain life-history.
But, after all, the promotion21 of literary analysis is not the object of these chapters. Plain reading, and the pleasure of it, is what I have in mind. For that cause I love most of George Eliot’s novels, and am ready to maintain that they are worthy22 to be loved. And so, even if my “taken for granted” a few lines above should not be altogether accurate in these days of ignorant contempt of all that is
[139]
“Victorian,” I may still go ahead to speak of her books as they are in themselves: strong, fine, rewarding pieces of English fiction: that is what they would remain, no matter who had written them.
It must be admitted at once that they are not adapted to readers who like to be spared the trouble of thinking while they read. They do not belong to the class of massage-fiction, Turkish-bath novels. They require a certain amount of intellectual exercise; and for this they return, it seems to me, an adequate recompense in the pleasurable sense of quickened mental activity and vigour23.
But this admission must not be taken to imply that they are obscure, intricate, enigmatical, “tough reading,” like the later books of George Meredith and Henry James, in which a minimum of meaning is hidden in a maximum of obfuscated24 verbiage25, and the reader is invited to a tedious game of hunt-the-slipper. On the contrary, George Eliot at her best is a very clear writer—decidedly not shallow, nor superficial, nor hasty,—like the running comment which is supposed to illuminate26 the scenes in a moving-picture show,—but intentionally27 lucid28 and
[140]
perspicuous. Having a story to tell, she takes pains to tell it so that you can follow it, not only in its outward, but also in its inward movement. Having certain characters to depict29 (and almost always mixed characters of good and evil mingled31 and conflicting as in real life), she is careful to draw them so that you shall feel their reality and take an interest in their strifes and adventures.
They are distinctly persons, capable of making their own choice between the worse and the better reason, and thereafter influenced by the consequences of that choice, which, if repeated, becomes a habit of moral victory or defeat. They are not puppets in, the hands of an inscrutable Fate, like most of the figures in the books of the modern Russian novelists and their imitators. What do I care for the ever-so realistically painted marionettes in the fiction of Messrs. Gawky, Popoff, Dropoff, and Slumpoff? What interest have I in the minute articulations of the dingy33 automatons34 of Mijnheer Couperus, or the dismal35, despicable figures who are pulled through the pages of Mr. Samuel Butler’s The Way of All Flesh? A claim on compassion36 they
[141]
might have if they were alive. But being, by the avowal37 of their creators, nothing more than imaginary bundles of sensation, helpless playthings of irresistible38 hereditary39 impulse and entangling40 destiny, their story and their fate leave me cold. What does it matter what becomes of them? They can neither be saved nor damned. They can only be drifted. There is no more human interest in them than there is in the predestined saints and foredoomed sinners of a certain type of Calvinistic theology.
But this is not George Eliot’s view of life. It is not to her “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing.” Within the fixed41 circle of its stern natural and moral laws there is a hidden field of conflict where the soul is free to discern and choose its own cause, and to fight for it or betray it. However small that field may be, while it exists life has a meaning, and personalities42 are real, and the results of their striving or surrendering, though rarely seen complete or final, are worth following and thinking about. Thus George Eliot’s people—at least the majority of them—have the
[142]
human touch which justifies43 narrative44 and comment. We follow the fortunes of Dinah Morris and of Maggie Tulliver, of Romola, and of Dorothea Brooke—yes, and of Hetty Sorrel and Rosamund Vincy—precisely45 because we feel that they are real women and that the turning of their ways will reveal the secret of their hearts.
It is a mistake to think (as a recent admirable essay of Professor W. L. Cross seems to imply) that the books of George Eliot are characteristically novels of argument or propaganda. Once only, or perhaps twice, she yielded to that temptation and spoiled her story. But for the rest she kept clear of the snare46 of Tendenz.
Purpose-novels, like advertisements, belong in the temporary department. As certain goods and wares47 go out of date, and the often eloquent48 announcements that commended them suddenly disappear; even so the “burning questions” of the hour and age burn out, and the solutions of them presented in the form of fiction fall down with the other ashes. They have served their purpose, well or ill, and their transient importance is ended.
[143]
What endures, if anything, is the human story vividly49 told, the human characters graphically50 depicted51. These have a permanent value. These belong to literature. Here I would place Adam Bede and Silas Marner and The Mill on the Floss and Middlemarch, because they deal with problems which never grow old; but not Robert Elsmere, because it deals chiefly with a defunct52 controversy53 in Biblical criticism.
George Eliot was thirty-eight years old when she made the amazing discovery that she was by nature, not what she had thought herself, a philosophical54 essayist and a translator of arid55 German treatises56 against revealed religion, but something very different—a novelist of human souls, and especially of the souls of women. It was the noteworthy success of her three long short stories, Amos Barton, Mr. Gilfil’s Love Story, and Janet’s Repentance57, printed in Blackwood’s Magazine in 1857, that revealed her to herself and to the world.
“Depend upon it, [she says to her imaginary reader in the first of these stories,] you would gain unspeakably if you would learn with me to see
[144]
something of the poetry and the pathos58, the tragedy and the comedy, lying in the experience of the human soul that looks out through dull gray eyes and speaks in a voice of quite ordinary tones.”
It was the interior drama of human life that attracted her interest and moved her heart with pity and fear, laughter and love. She found it for the most part in what we should call mediocre60 surroundings and on rather a humble61 and obscure stage. But what she found was not mediocre. It was the same discovery that Wordsworth made:
“A grandeur62 in the beatings of the heart.”
By this I do not mean to say that a close study of the humanness of human nature, a searching contemplation of character, an acute and penetrating63 psychological analysis is all that there is in her novels. This is her predominant interest, beyond a doubt. She belongs to the school of Hawthorne, Henry James, Thomas Hardy—realists or romancers of the interior life. But she has other interests; and there are other things to reward us in the reading of her books.
[145]
There is, first of all, an admirable skill in the setting of her stories. No other novelist has described English midland landscape, towns, and hamlets, better than she. No other writer has given the rich, history-saturated scenery of Florence as well.
She is careful also not to exclude from her stage that messenger of relief and contrast whom George Meredith calls “the comic spirit.” Shakespeare’s clowns, wonderful as some of them are, seem at times like supernumeraries. They come in to make a “diversion.” But George Eliot’s rustic64 wits and conscious or unconscious humourists belong to the story. Mrs. Poyser and Bartle Massey, Mrs. Glegg and Mrs. Tulliver and Bob Jakin, could not be spared.
And then, her stories are really stories. They have action. They move; though sometimes, it must be confessed, they move slowly. Not only do the characters develop, one way or the other, but the plot also develops. Sometimes it is very simple, as in Silas Marner; sometimes it is extremely complicated, as in Middlemarch, where three love-stories are braided together. One thing it never is—theatrical.
[146]
Yet at times it moves into an intense scene, like the trial of Hetty Sorrel or the death of Tito Melema, in which the very essence of tragedy is concentrated.
From the success of Scenes of Clerical Life George Eliot went on steadily65 with her work in fiction, never turning aside, never pausing even, except when her health compelled, or when she needed time to fill her mind and heart with a new subject. She did not write rapidly, nor are her books easy to read in a hurry.
It was an extraordinary series: Adam Bede in 1859, The Mill on the Floss in 1860, Silas Marner in 1861, Romola in 1863, Felix Holt, the Radical66 in 1866, Middlemarch in 1871, Daniel Deronda in 1876; no padding, no “seconds,” each book apparently67 more successful, certainly more famous, than its predecessor68. How could one woman produce so much closely wrought69, finely finished work? Of what sturdy mental race were the serious readers who welcomed it and found delight in it?
Mr. Oscar Browning of Cambridge said that Daniel Deronda was the climax70, “the sun and glory
[147]
of George Eliot’s art.” From that academic judgment71 I venture to dissent72. It is a great book, no doubt, the work of a powerful intellect. But to me it was at the first reading, and is still, a tiresome73 book. Tediousness, which is a totally different thing from seriousness, is the unpardonable defect in a novel. It may be my own fault, but Deronda seems to me something of a prig. Now a man may be a prig without sin, but he ought not to take up too much room. Deronda takes up too much room. And Gwendolen Harleth, who dressed by preference in sea-green, seems to me to have a soul of the same colour—a psychological mermaid74. She is unconvincing. I cannot love her. The vivid little Jewess, Mirah, is the only character with charm in the book.
Middlemarch is noteworthy for its extraordinary richness of human observation and the unexcelled truthfulness75 of some of its portraits. Mr. Isaac Casaubon is the living image of the gray-minded scholar and gentleman,—as delicately drawn as one of Miss Cecelia Beaux’ portraits of aged59, learned, wrinkled men. Rosamund Vincy is the typical
[148]
“daughter of the horse-leech” in respectable clothes and surroundings. Dorothea Brooke is one of George Eliot’s finest sacrificial heroines:
“A perfect woman, nobly plann’d.”
The book, as a whole, seems to me to have the defect of superabundance. There is too much of it. It is like one of the late William Frith’s large canvases, “The Derby Day,” or “The Railway Station.” It is constructed with skill, and full of rich material, but it does not compose. You cannot see the people for the crowd. Yet there is hardly a corner of the story in which you will not find something worth while.
Felix Holt, the Radical is marred76, at least for me, by a fault of another kind. It is a novel of problem, of purpose. I do not care for problem-novels, unless the problem is alive, and even then I do not care very much for political economy in that form. It is too easy for the author to prove any proposition by attaching it to a noble character, or to disprove any theory by giving it an unworthy advocate. English radicalism77 of 1832 has quite passed away,
[149]
or gone into the Coalition78 Cabinet. All that saves Felix Holt now (as it seems to me, who read novels primarily for pleasure) is the lovely figure of Esther Lyon, and her old father, a preacher who really was good.
Following the path still backward, we come to something altogether different. Romola is a historical romance on the grand scale. In the central background is the heroic figure of Savonarola, saintly but not impeccable; in the middle distance, a crowd of Renaissance79 people immersed in the rich and bloody80 turmoil81 of that age; in the foreground, the sharp contrast of two epic30 personalities—Tito Melema, the incarnation of smooth, easy-going selfishness which never refuses a pleasure nor accepts a duty; and Romola, the splendid embodiment of pure love in self-surrendering womanhood. The shameful82 end of Tito, swept away by the flooded river Arno and finally choked to death by the father whom he had disowned and wronged, has in it the sombre tone of Fate. But the end of the book is not defeat; it is triumph. Romola, victor through selfless courage and patience, saves and protects
[150]
the deserted83 mistress and children of her faithless husband. In the epilogue we see her like Notre Dame84 de Secours, throned in mercy and crowned with compassion.
Listen to her as she talks to Tito’s son in the loggia looking over Florence to the heights beyond Fiesole.
“‘What is it, Lillo?’ said Romola, pulling his hair back from his brow. Lillo was a handsome lad, but his features were turning out to be more massive and less regular than his father’s. The blood of the Tuscan peasant was in his veins85.
“‘Mamma Romola, what am I to be?’ he said, well contented86 that there was a prospect87 of talking till it would be too late to con5 Spirto gentil any longer.
“‘What should you like to be, Lillo? You might be a scholar. My father was a scholar, you know, and taught me a great deal. That is the reason why I can teach you.’
“‘Yes,’ said Lillo, rather hesitatingly. ‘But he is old and blind in the picture. Did he get a great deal of glory?’
[151]
“‘Not much, Lillo. The world was not always very kind to him, and he saw meaner men than himself put into higher places, because they could flatter and say what was false. And then his dear son thought it right to leave him and become a monk88; and after that, my father, being blind and lonely, felt unable to do the things that would have made his learning of greater use to men, so that he might still have lived in his works after he was in his grave.’
“‘I should not like that sort of life,’ said Lillo. ‘I should like to be something that would make me a great man, and very happy besides—something that would not hinder me from having a good deal of pleasure.’
“‘That is not easy, my Lillo. It is only a poor sort of happiness that could ever come by caring very much about our own narrow pleasures. We can only have the highest happiness, such as goes along with being a great man, by having wide thoughts, and feeling for the rest of the world as well as ourselves; and this sort of happiness often brings so much pain with it, that we can only tell
[152]
it from pain by its being what we would choose before everything else, because our souls see it is good. 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. My father had the greatness that belongs to integrity; he chose poverty and obscurity rather than falsehood. And there was Fra Girolamo—you know why I keep to-morrow sacred: he had the greatness which belongs to a life spent in struggling against powerful wrong, and in trying to raise men to the highest deeds they are capable of. And so, my Lillo, if you mean to act nobly and seek to know the best things God has put within reach of men, you must learn to fix your mind on that end, and not on what will happen to you because of it. And remember, if you were to choose something lower, and make it the rule of your life to seek your own pleasure and escape from what is disagreeable, calamity89 might come just the same; and it would be calamity falling on a base mind, which is the one
[153]
form of sorrow that has no balm in it, and that may well make a man say, “It would have been better for me if I had never been born.” I will tell you something, Lillo.’
“Romola paused for a moment. She had taken Lillo’s cheeks between her hands, and his young eyes were meeting hers.
“‘There was a man to whom I was very near, so that I could see a great deal of his life, who made almost every one fond of him, for he was young, and clever, and beautiful, and his manners to all were gentle and kind. I believe, when I first knew him, he never thought of anything cruel or base. But because he tried to slip away from everything that was unpleasant, and cared for nothing else so much as his own safety, he came at last to commit some of the basest deeds—such as make men infamous90. He denied his father, and left him to misery91; he betrayed every trust that was reposed92 in him, that he might keep himself safe and get rich and prosperous. Yet calamity overtook him.’
“Again Romola paused. Her voice was unsteady, and Lillo was looking up at her with awed93 wonder.
[154]
“‘Another time, my Lillo—I will tell you another time. See, there are our old Piero di Cosimo and Nello coming up the Borgo Pinti, bringing us their flowers. Let us go and wave our hands to them, that they may know we see them.’”
Hardly one of George Eliot’s stories has a conventional “happy ending.” Yet they leave us not depressed94, but strengthened to endure and invigorated to endeavour. In this they differ absolutely from the pessimistic novels of the present hour, which not only leave a bad taste in the mouth, but also a sense of futility95 in the heart.
Let me turn now to her first two novels, which still seem to me her best. Bear in mind, I am not formulating96 academic theories, nor pronouncing ex cathedrâ judgments97, but simply recording98 for the consideration of other readers certain personal observations and reactions.
Adam Bede is a novel of rustic tragedy in which some of the characters are drawn directly from memory. Adam is a partial portrait of George Eliot’s father, and Dinah Morris a sketch99 of her aunt, a Methodist woman preacher. There is plenty of comic relief in the story, admirably done.
[155]
Take the tongue duel100 between Bartle Massey, the sharp-spoken, kind-hearted bachelor school-master, and Mrs. Poyser, the humorous, pungent102, motherly wife of the old farmer.
“‘What!’ said Bartle, with an air of disgust. ‘Was there a woman concerned? Then I give you up, Adam.’
“‘But it’s a woman you’n spoke101 well on, Bartle,’ said Mr. Poyser. ‘Come, now, you canna draw back; you said once as women wouldna ha’ been a bad invention if they’d all been like Dinah.’
“‘I meant her voice, man—I meant her voice, that was all,’ said Bartle. ‘I can bear to hear her speak without wanting to put wool in my ears. As for other things, I dare say she’s like the rest o’ the women—thinks two and two ’ull come to make five, if she cries and bothers enough about it.’
“‘Ay, ay!’ said Mrs. Poyser; ‘one ’ud think, an’ hear some folks talk, as the men war ’cute enough to count the corns in a bag o’ wheat wi’ only smelling at it. They can see through a barn door, they can. Perhaps that’s the reason they can see so little o’ this side on’t.’
“‘Ah!’ said Bartle, sneeringly103, ‘the women are
[156]
quick enough—they’re quick enough. They know the rights of a story before they hear it, and can tell a man what his thoughts are before he knows ’em himself.’
“‘Like enough,’ said Mrs. Poyser; ‘for the men are mostly so slow, their thoughts overrun ’em, an’ they can only catch ’em by the tail. I can count a stocking-top while a man’s getting’s tongue ready; an’ when he outs wi’ his speech at last, there’s little broth7 to be made on’t. It’s your dead chicks take the longest hatchin’. Howiver, I’m not denyin’ the women are foolish: God Almighty104 made ’em to match the men.’
“‘Match!’ said Bartle; ‘ay, as vinegar matches one’s teeth. If a man says a word, his wife’ll match it with a contradiction; if he’s a mind for hot meat, his wife’ll match it with cold bacon; if he laughs, she’ll match him with whimpering. She’s such a match as the horsefly is to th’ horse: she’s got the right venom105 to sting him with—the right venom to sting him with.’
“‘What dost say to that?’ said Mr. Poyser, throwing himself back and looking merrily at his wife.
[157]
“‘Say!’ answered Mrs. Poyser, with dangerous fire kindling106 in her eye; ‘why, I say as some folks’ tongues are like the clocks as run on strikin’, not to tell you the time o’ the day, but because there’s summat wrong i’ their own inside.’ ...”
The plot, as in Scott’s Heart of Midlothian, turns on a case of seduction and child murder, and the contrast between Effie and Jeannie Deans has its parallel in the stronger contrast between Hetty Sorrel and Dinah Morris. Hetty looked as if she were “made of roses”; but she was, in Mrs. Poyser’s phrase, “no better nor a cherry wi’ a hard stone inside it.” Dinah’s human beauty of face and voice was the true reflection of her inward life which
“cast a beam on the outward shape,
The unpolluted temple of the mind,
And turned it by degrees to the soul’s essence.”
The crisis of the book comes in the prison, where Dinah wrestles107 for the soul of Hetty—a scene as passionate108 and moving as any in fiction. Dinah triumphs, not by her own might, but by the sheer power and beauty of the Christian109 faith and love which she embodies110.
[158]
In George Eliot’s novels you will find some passages of stinging and well-merited satire111 on the semi-pagan, conventional religion of middle-class orthodoxy in England of the nineteenth century—“proud respectability in a gig of unfashionable build; worldliness without side-dishes”—read the chapter on “A Variation of Protestantism Unknown to Bossuet,” in The Mill on the Floss. But you will not find a single page or paragraph that would draw or drive the reader away from real Christianity. On the contrary, she has expressed the very secret of its appeal to the human heart through the words and conduct of some of her best characters. They do not argue; they utter and show the meaning of religion. On me the effect of her books is a deepened sense of the inevitable112 need of Christ and his gospel to sustain and nourish the high morality of courage and compassion, patience, and hope, which she so faithfully teaches.
The truth is, George Eliot lived in the afterglow of Christian faith. Rare souls are capable of doing that. But mankind at large needs the sunrise.
The Mill on the Floss is partly an autobiographic
[159]
romance. Maggie Tulliver’s character resembles George Eliot in her youth. The contrast between the practical and the ideal, the conflict between love and duty in the heart of a girl, belong to those problematische Naturen, as Goethe called them, which may taste keen joys but cannot escape sharp sorrows. The centre of the story lies in Maggie’s strong devotion to her father and to her brother Tom—a person not altogether unlike the “elder brother” in the parable—in strife32 with her love for Philip, the son of the family enemy. Tom ruthlessly commands his sister to choose between breaking with him and giving up her lover. Maggie, after a bitter struggle, chooses her brother. Would a real woman do that? Yes, I have known some very real women who have done it, in one case with a tragic113 result.
The original title of this book (and the right one) was Sister Maggie. Yet we can see why George Eliot chose the other name. The little river Floss, so tranquil114 in its regular tidal flow, yet capable of such fierce and sudden outbreaks, runs through the book from beginning to end. It is a mysterious
[160]
type of the ineluctable power of Nature in man’s mortal drama.
In the last chapter, when the flood comes, and the erring115 sister who loved her brother so tenderly, rescues him who loved her so cruelly from the ruined mill, the frail116 skiff which carries them clasped heart to heart, reconciled in that revealing moment, goes down in the senseless irresistible rush of waters.
It is not a “bad ending.” The sister’s love triumphs. Such a close was inevitable for such a story. But it is not a conclusion. It cries out for immortality117.
On the art of George Eliot judgments have differed. Mr. Oscar Browning, a respectable authority, thinks highly of it. Mr. W. C. Brownell, a far better critic, indeed one of the very best, thinks less favourably118 of it, says that it is too intellectual; that the development and conduct of her characters are too logical and consistent; that the element of surprize, which is always present in life, is lacking in her people. “Our attention,” he writes, “is so concentrated on what they think that we hardly know how they feel, or whether ... they
[161]
feel at all.” This criticism does not seem to me altogether just. Certainly there is no lack of surprize in Maggie Tulliver’s temporary infatuation with the handsome, light-minded Stephen Guest, or in Dorothea Brooke’s marriage to that heady young butterfly, Will Ladislaw. These things certainly were not arrived at by logical consistency119. Nor can one lay his hand on his heart and say that there is no feeling in the chapter where the fugitive120 Romola comes as Madonna to the mountain village, stricken by pestilence121, or in the passage where Dinah Morris strives for Hetty’s soul in prison.
George Eliot herself tells us the purpose of her art—it is verity122.
“It is for this rare, precious quality of truthfulness that I delight in many Dutch paintings, which lofty-minded people despise.... All honour and reverence123 to the divine beauty of form! Let us cultivate it to the utmost in men, women, and children—in our gardens and in our homes. But let us love that other beauty, too, which lies in no secret of proportion, but in the secret of deep human sympathy.”
It is Rembrandt, then, rather than Titian, who
[162]
is her chosen painter. But she does not often attain124 his marvellous chiaroscuro125.
Her style is clear and almost always firm in drawing, though deficient126 in colour. It is full of meaning, almost over-scrupulous in defining precisely what she wishes to express. Here and there it flashes into a wise saying, a sparkling epigram. At other times, especially in her later books, it spreads out and becomes too diffuse127, too slow, like Sir Walter Scott’s. But it never repels128 by vulgar smartness, nor perplexes by vagueness and artificial obscurity. It serves her purpose well—to convey the results of her scrutiny129 of the inner life and her loving observation of the outer life in its humblest forms. In these respects it is admirable and satisfying. And it is her own—she does not imitate, nor write according to a theory.
Her general view of human nature is not essentially130 different from that expressed in a passage which I quoted from Thackeray in the previous chapter. We are none of us “irreproachable characters.” We are “mixed human beings.” Therefore she wishes to tell her stories “in such a way as
[163]
to call forth131 tolerant judgment, pity, and sympathy.”
As I began so let me end this chapter—with a word on women. For myself, I think it wise and prudent132 to maintain with Plutarch that virtue133 in man and woman is one and the same. Yet there is a difference between the feminine and the masculine virtues134. This opinion Plutarch sets forth and illustrates135 in his brief histories, and George Eliot in her novels. But of the virtues of women she gives more and finer examples.
点击
收听单词发音
收听单词发音 |
1
salute
|
|
| vi.行礼，致意，问候，放礼炮；vt.向…致意，迎接，赞扬；n.招呼，敬礼，礼炮 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
2
indignity
|
|
| n.侮辱，伤害尊严，轻蔑 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
3
perilous
|
|
| adj.危险的，冒险的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
4
pseudonym
|
|
| n.假名，笔名 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
5
con
|
|
| n.反对的观点，反对者，反对票，肺病；vt.精读，学习，默记；adv.反对地，从反面；adj.欺诈的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
6
logic
|
|
| n.逻辑(学)；逻辑性 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
7
broth
|
|
| n.原(汁)汤(鱼汤、肉汤、菜汤等) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
8
lewdly
|
|
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
9
melancholy
|
|
| n.忧郁，愁思；adj.令人感伤（沮丧）的，忧郁的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
10
graphic
|
|
| adj.生动的，形象的，绘画的，文字的，图表的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
11
meticulously
|
|
| adv.过细地，异常细致地；无微不至；精心 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
12
potent
|
|
| adj.强有力的，有权势的；有效力的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
13
differentiate
|
|
| vi.(between)区分；vt.区别；使不同 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
14
peculiar
|
|
| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
15
excellence
|
|
| n.优秀，杰出，(pl.)优点，美德 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
16
sanely
|
|
| ad.神志清楚地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
17
preposterous
|
|
| adj.荒谬的，可笑的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
18
pretension
|
|
| n.要求；自命，自称；自负 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
19
drawn
|
|
| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
20
illuminating
|
|
| a.富于启发性的，有助阐明的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
21
promotion
|
|
| n.提升，晋级；促销，宣传 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
22
worthy
|
|
| adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
23
vigour
|
|
| （=vigor）n.智力，体力，精力 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
24
obfuscated
|
|
| v.使模糊，使混乱( obfuscate的过去式和过去分词 )；使糊涂 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
|
25
verbiage
|
|
| n.冗词；冗长 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
26
illuminate
|
|
| vt.照亮，照明；用灯光装饰；说明，阐释 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
27
intentionally
|
|
| ad.故意地，有意地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
28
lucid
|
|
| adj.明白易懂的，清晰的，头脑清楚的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
29
depict
|
|
| vt.描画，描绘；描写，描述 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
30
epic
|
|
| n.史诗，叙事诗；adj.史诗般的，壮丽的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
31
mingled
|
|
| 混合，混入( mingle的过去式和过去分词 )； 混进，与…交往[联系] | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
32
strife
|
|
| n.争吵，冲突，倾轧，竞争 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
33
dingy
|
|
| adj.昏暗的，肮脏的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
34
automatons
|
|
| n.自动机，机器人( automaton的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
35
dismal
|
|
| adj.阴沉的，凄凉的，令人忧郁的，差劲的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
36
compassion
|
|
| n.同情，怜悯 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
37
avowal
|
|
| n.公开宣称，坦白承认 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
38
irresistible
|
|
| adj.非常诱人的，无法拒绝的，无法抗拒的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
39
hereditary
|
|
| adj.遗传的，遗传性的，可继承的，世袭的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
40
entangling
|
|
| v.使某人（某物/自己）缠绕，纠缠于（某物中），使某人（自己）陷入（困难或复杂的环境中）( entangle的现在分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
41
fixed
|
|
| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
42
personalities
|
|
| n. 诽谤，（对某人容貌、性格等所进行的）人身攻击； 人身攻击；人格, 个性, 名人( personality的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
43
justifies
|
|
| 证明…有理( justify的第三人称单数 )； 为…辩护； 对…作出解释； 为…辩解（或辩护） | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
44
narrative
|
|
| n.叙述，故事；adj.叙事的，故事体的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
45
precisely
|
|
| adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
46
snare
|
|
| n.陷阱，诱惑，圈套；（去除息肉或者肿瘤的）勒除器；响弦，小军鼓；vt.以陷阱捕获，诱惑 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
47
wares
|
|
| n. 货物, 商品 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
48
eloquent
|
|
| adj.雄辩的，口才流利的；明白显示出的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
49
vividly
|
|
| adv.清楚地，鲜明地，生动地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
50
graphically
|
|
| adv.通过图表；生动地，轮廓分明地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
51
depicted
|
|
| 描绘，描画( depict的过去式和过去分词 )； 描述 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
52
defunct
|
|
| adj.死亡的；已倒闭的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
53
controversy
|
|
| n.争论，辩论，争吵 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
54
philosophical
|
|
| adj.哲学家的，哲学上的，达观的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
55
arid
|
|
| adj.干旱的；(土地)贫瘠的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
56
treatises
|
|
| n.专题著作，专题论文，专著( treatise的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
57
repentance
|
|
| n.懊悔 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
58
pathos
|
|
| n.哀婉，悲怆 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
59
aged
|
|
| adj.年老的，陈年的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
60
mediocre
|
|
| adj.平常的，普通的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
61
humble
|
|
| adj.谦卑的，恭顺的；地位低下的；v.降低，贬低 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
62
grandeur
|
|
| n.伟大，崇高，宏伟，庄严，豪华 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
63
penetrating
|
|
| adj.（声音）响亮的，尖锐的adj.（气味）刺激的adj.（思想）敏锐的，有洞察力的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
64
rustic
|
|
| adj.乡村的，有乡村特色的；n.乡下人，乡巴佬 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
65
steadily
|
|
| adv.稳定地；不变地；持续地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
66
radical
|
|
| n.激进份子，原子团，根号；adj.根本的，激进的，彻底的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
67
apparently
|
|
| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
68
predecessor
|
|
| n.前辈，前任 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
69
wrought
|
|
| v.引起；以…原料制作；运转；adj.制造的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
70
climax
|
|
| n.顶点；高潮；v.(使)达到顶点 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
71
judgment
|
|
| n.审判；判断力，识别力，看法，意见 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
72
dissent
|
|
| n./v.不同意，持异议 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
73
tiresome
|
|
| adj.令人疲劳的，令人厌倦的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
74
mermaid
|
|
| n.美人鱼 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
75
truthfulness
|
|
| n. 符合实际 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
76
marred
|
|
| adj. 被损毁, 污损的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
77
radicalism
|
|
| n. 急进主义, 根本的改革主义 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
78
coalition
|
|
| n.结合体，同盟，结合，联合 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
79
renaissance
|
|
| n.复活，复兴，文艺复兴 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
80
bloody
|
|
| adj.非常的的；流血的；残忍的；adv.很；vt.血染 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
81
turmoil
|
|
| n.骚乱，混乱，动乱 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
82
shameful
|
|
| adj.可耻的，不道德的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
83
deserted
|
|
| adj.荒芜的，荒废的，无人的，被遗弃的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
84
dame
|
|
| n.女士 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
85
veins
|
|
| n.纹理；矿脉( vein的名词复数 )；静脉；叶脉；纹理 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
86
contented
|
|
| adj.满意的，安心的，知足的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
87
prospect
|
|
| n.前景，前途；景色，视野 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
88
monk
|
|
| n.和尚，僧侣，修道士 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
89
calamity
|
|
| n.灾害，祸患，不幸事件 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
90
infamous
|
|
| adj.声名狼藉的，臭名昭著的，邪恶的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
91
misery
|
|
| n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
92
reposed
|
|
| v.将（手臂等）靠在某人（某物）上( repose的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
93
awed
|
|
| adj.充满敬畏的，表示敬畏的v.使敬畏，使惊惧( awe的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
94
depressed
|
|
| adj.沮丧的，抑郁的，不景气的，萧条的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
95
futility
|
|
| n.无用 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
96
formulating
|
|
| v.构想出( formulate的现在分词 )；规划；确切地阐述；用公式表示 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
97
judgments
|
|
| 判断( judgment的名词复数 )； 鉴定； 评价； 审判 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
98
recording
|
|
| n.录音，记录 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
99
sketch
|
|
| n.草图；梗概；素描；v.素描；概述 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
100
duel
|
|
| n./v.决斗；(双方的)斗争 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
101
spoke
|
|
| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
102
pungent
|
|
| adj.（气味、味道）刺激性的，辛辣的；尖锐的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
103
sneeringly
|
|
| 嘲笑地，轻蔑地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
104
almighty
|
|
| adj.全能的，万能的；很大的，很强的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
105
venom
|
|
| n.毒液，恶毒，痛恨 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
106
kindling
|
|
| n. 点火, 可燃物 动词kindle的现在分词形式 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
107
wrestles
|
|
| v.（与某人）搏斗( wrestle的第三人称单数 )；扭成一团；扭打；（与…）摔跤 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
108
passionate
|
|
| adj.热情的，热烈的，激昂的，易动情的，易怒的，性情暴躁的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
109
Christian
|
|
| adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
110
embodies
|
|
| v.表现( embody的第三人称单数 )；象征；包括；包含 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
111
satire
|
|
| n.讽刺，讽刺文学，讽刺作品 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
112
inevitable
|
|
| adj.不可避免的，必然发生的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
113
tragic
|
|
| adj.悲剧的，悲剧性的，悲惨的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
114
tranquil
|
|
| adj. 安静的, 宁静的, 稳定的, 不变的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
115
erring
|
|
| 做错事的，错误的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
116
frail
|
|
| adj.身体虚弱的；易损坏的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
117
immortality
|
|
| n.不死，不朽 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
118
favourably
|
|
| adv. 善意地，赞成地 =favorably | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
119
consistency
|
|
| n.一贯性，前后一致，稳定性；(液体的)浓度 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
120
fugitive
|
|
| adj.逃亡的，易逝的；n.逃犯，逃亡者 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
121
pestilence
|
|
| n.瘟疫 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
122
verity
|
|
| n.真实性 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
123
reverence
|
|
| n.敬畏，尊敬，尊严；Reverence:对某些基督教神职人员的尊称；v.尊敬，敬畏，崇敬 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
124
attain
|
|
| vt.达到，获得，完成 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
125
chiaroscuro
|
|
| n.明暗对照法 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
126
deficient
|
|
| adj.不足的，不充份的，有缺陷的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
127
diffuse
|
|
| v.扩散；传播；adj.冗长的；四散的，弥漫的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
128
repels
|
|
| v.击退( repel的第三人称单数 )；使厌恶；排斥；推开 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
129
scrutiny
|
|
| n.详细检查，仔细观察 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
130
essentially
|
|
| adv.本质上，实质上，基本上 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
131
forth
|
|
| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
132
prudent
|
|
| adj.谨慎的，有远见的，精打细算的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
133
virtue
|
|
| n.德行，美德；贞操；优点；功效，效力 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
134
virtues
|
|
| 美德( virtue的名词复数 )； 德行； 优点； 长处 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
135
illustrates
|
|
| 给…加插图( illustrate的第三人称单数 )； 说明； 表明； （用示例、图画等）说明 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
| 欢迎访问英文小说网 |