Versions of Victorian realism in George Eliot's fiction: the philosophical and

Versions of Victorian realism in George Eliot's fiction: the philosophical and

intellectual novel

G.Eliot's fictional method reflects the characteristics of realism as defined by the author

herself: the inclusion of random details of everyday life, "the 717h76h modest virtues and vices of the

humble folk", "a religion of truth", a concern with obscure, unheroic people, placed in a

deterministic environment. The low-mimetic lowers the high-mimetic and the romance

(confrontation between good and evil) modes, weakening them in the service of realistic

purposes. Much of her intellectual background is carried into her fiction, focussing on one's

capacity to sympathize with individual suffering.

As a Victorian emancipated and lucid intellectual, George Eliot began by writing for the

Westminster Review and in this capacity she became acquainted to the philosopher Herbert

Spencer and to the writer, publisher and dramatic critic George Henry Lewes. In the same year

she translated Feuerbach's Essence of Christianity, the only one of her writings to which she

attached her real name (for Fuerbach, God was an ideal substitute for the real world). In 1846,

George Eliot engaged in her first literary work, the completion of a translation begun by Mrs.

Hennell of David Strauss's Life of Jesus, a representative work for the "higher criticism" of the

Bible (investigation that points to the role of imagination and myth in the creation of religious

thought).

It was not until 1857 that The Sad Fortunes of the Rev. Amos Barton appeared in

Blackwood's Magazine. It was followed by Mr. Gilfil's Love Story and Janet's Repentance,

all three being reprinted as Scenes from Clerical Life; Adam Bede was published in 1859, The

Mill on the Floss, in its earlier chapters largely autobiographical, in 1860, Silas Marner, in

1861. These novels showed another side of her creative concern, the nostalgic desire to present

the regional life of the countryside, to recover the past and cultivate the religion of the heart, of

feelings and human compassion. Romola, a historical tale of the times of Savonarola (15th

century) appeared in 1863 in the Cornhill Magazine, followed by Felix Holt the Radical, a

political novel set in 1830s. Middlemarch, a Study of Provincial Life, which appeared in parts

in 1871-72, was by many considered to be one of her greatest works. Daniel Deronda, which

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came out in 1874-76 was her last novel. George Eliot will probably always retain a high place

among writers of fiction. Much of her intellectual background is carried into her fiction,

replacing the belief in supernatural forces by humanism and one's capacity to sympathize

with individual suffering.

There are also feminist ideas in her novels, implied in the condition of her heroines. Her

great power lies in the minute painting of character, chiefly among the lower middle classes,

tradesmen, country folk of the Midlands and her descriptions of rural scenes that have a

singular charm. Chapter XVII from Adam Bede presents her artistic creed under the form of

an imaginary conversation with "a genteel reader who yearns about heroic deeds". The author

states her desire to present average people and their anonymous dramas, to analyse human

nature in its complexity:

"Let us love that other beauty too, which lies in no secret of proportion, but in the secret

of deep human sympathy. Paint us an angel, if you can, with a floating violet robe, and a

face paled by the celestial light.but do not impose on us any aesthetic rules which shall

banish from the region of Art those old women scraping carrots with their work-worn

hands, those heavy clowns taking holiday in a dingy pot-house, those rounded backs and

stupid weather-beaten faces that have bent over the spade and done the rough work of

the world - those homes with their tin pans, their brown pitchers, their rough curs and

their clusters of onions. In this world there are so many of these common, coarse people,

who have no picturesque sentimental wretchedness! It is so needful we should

remember their existence, else we may happen to leave them quite out of our religion

and philosophy, and frame lofty theories which only fit a world of extremes. Therefore

let Art always remind us of them; therefore let us always have men ready to give

the loving pains of life to the faithful representing of commonplace things - men

who see beauty in these commonplace things, and delight in showing how kindly the

light of heaven falls on them"

Critics have shown George Eliot's sympathy for the rare quality of truthfulness to be

found in Dutch paintings, her interest in an almost photographic accuracy, her examination of

subjects for the benefit of truth. Her first volume, Adam Bede, is therefore a pastoral novel,

presenting the regional life of the countryside against a background of a somewhat idyllic

nature. In her essay on The Natural History of German Life, George Eliot states that the task

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of an author concerned with social or political issues is to devote himself to studying the

natural history of the social classes, especially of the simple people: tenant-farmers, artisans,

peasantry, "the degree in which they are influenced by religious doctrines, the consequences

of their position towards development". She was a proponent of the positivism of the French

philosopher Auguste Comte, who believed the older concepts of faith and immortality should

be discarded in favour of "a religion of humanity". From Comte she also adopted the scientific

attitude towards social behaviour (he was the founder of sociology as a new science).

The world in which her imagination finds itself at its greatest ease is that of the province,

typifying the universe of her own childhood. The Mill on the Floss describes the emotional and

intellectual evolution over a period of ten years of Maggie Tulliver, whose father possesses a

mill near the town of St.Ogg's. It probes into the life of a brother and sister presented with great

sensitiveness. Maggie, a passionate and intelligent nature, reacts against the patterns of

provincial life, against the coarse values of the boy. The author relies on the qualities of the

omniscient narrator but her method contains oral overtones because the narrator often

addresses the implied reader and invites him to take a look at the places and people described in

the novel. The story is based on the recollections of the narrator but it is also the outcome of

imagination.

Through the presentation of two families, the Tullivers and the Dodsons, Eliot

investigates middle-class mentality based on decorum and tradition, conventional,

unimaginative. Romantic visions, wild, uncontrollable passions, wide perspectives are unknown

to these people. The narrator's references contain ironic tones in their description, as they

construct a world of respectable, thrifty but also flat characters. However, Eliot's interpretation

finds special qualities in them, as they conduct themselves with propriety and have "a certain

faithfulness to admitted rules and thoroughness of work". Matthew Arnold's criticism in

Culture and Anarchy may be associated to this analysis, as a protest against the pettiness and

emotional narrowness of the English middle class, of their lack of interest in ideals and rigid

principles. On the other hand, Eliot admits their rectitude of purpose and honesty. The writer's

concern with unheroic, obscure people is supported by her belief in scientific determinism.

Maggie's drama unfolds against the background of this rigid provincial mentality. A

sensitive child with artistic tastes, she has the intellectual resources for which her environment

doesn't provide much encouragement. Her drama is based on the incongruity between her

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character and the surroundings. Even her deep love for her brother Tom is thwarted by his

inflexibility. Actually, those around ses her as unfit for their patterns. Mrs. Pullet says to

Mrs.Tulliver: "You haven't seen the end of your trouble wi' that child, Bessie.; she's beyond

everything for boldness and unthankfulness" and Mr. Wakem characterizes her as being

"dangerous and unmanageable". One may point out that the narrative deconstructs the motif of

the expelled or outcast soul, the lonely or unique hero whose knowledge, character and thought

transcends its own background. Her life seems to be predetermined by cultural constructs

imposed by men.

The relationship between Maggie and her cousin Lucy is also an attack on romantic

illusion and conventional heroines. Maggie decides to adopt the pattern of self-renunciation in

acordance with her own ethical nature and conceptions. Again Matthew Arnold's criticism

may be used as he shows that culture - in contrast to the limited aspirations of provincial

mentalities- may offer a larger sense of human possibilities. Maggie and Philip acknowledge

the supremacy of spiritual values as they both value poetry, art, music. But, in M.Arnold's

opinion, society needs a balance between these two elements as they are both essential for the

development of the spirit.

In The Mill on the Floss as well as in Middlemarch, George Eliot subjects the vertical,

the ideal to the test of the horizontal conventionality, projecting her high-mimetic protagonists

(Maggie, Dorothea, Lydgate) endowed with a potential heroic stature, on the background of

the disenchanted low-mimetic plots in which they get intimately involved and trapped by

deterministic relationships. The low-mimetic lowers the high-mimetic and the romance

(confrontation between good and evil) modes, weakening them in the service of realistic

purposes.

Homework

1. Read George Eliot's Mill on the Floss and expain why it is considered a philosophical

and intellectual novel.

2. The utilitarian vs. humanitarian perspective in G.Eliot's fiction