English Literature
chief milestones along the road mark the publication of her successive
novels.
During all the years of her literary success her husband Lewes had been a
most sympathetic friend and critic, and when he died, in 1878, the loss
seemed to be more than she could bear. Her letters of this period are
touching in their loneliness and their craving for sympathy. Later she
astonished everybody by marrying John Walter Cross, much younger than
herself, who is known as her biographer. "Deep down below there is a river
of sadness, but ... I am able to enjoy my newly re-opened life," writes
this woman of sixty, who, ever since she was the girl whom we know as
Maggie Tulliver, must always have some one to love and to depend upon. Her
new interest in life lasted but a few months, for she died in December of
the same year (1880). One of the best indications of her strength and her
limitations is her portrait, with its strong masculine features, suggesting
both by resemblance and by contrast that wonderful portrait of Savonarola
which hangs over his old desk in the monastery at Florence.
WORKS OF GEORGE ELIOT. These are conveniently divided into three groups,
corresponding to the three periods of her life. The first group includes
all her early essays and miscellaneous work, from her translation of
Strauss's _Leben Jesu_, in 1846, to her union with Lewes in 1854. The
second group includes _Scenes of Clerical Life, Adam Bede, Mill on the
Floss_, and _Silas Marner_, all published between 1858 and 1861. These four
novels of the middle period are founded on the author's own life and
experience; their scenes are laid in the country, and their characters are
taken from the stolid people of the Midlands, with whom George Eliot had
been familiar since childhood. They are probably the author's most enduring
works. They have a naturalness, a spontaneity, at times a flash of real
humor, which are lacking in her later novels; and they show a rapid
development of literary power which reaches a climax in _Silas Marner_.
The novel of Italian life, _Romola_ (1862-1863), marks a transition to the
third group, which includes three more novels,--_Felix Holt_ (1866),
_Middlemarch_ (1871-1872), _Daniel Deronda_ (1876), the ambitious dramatic
poem _The Spanish Gypsy_ (1868), and a collection of miscellaneous essays
called _The Impressions of Theophrastus Such_ (1879). The general
impression, of these works is not so favorable as that produced by the
novels of the middle period. They are more labored and less interesting;
they contain much deep reflection and analysis of character, but less
observation, less delight in picturing country life as it is, and very
little of what we call inspiration. We must add, however, that this does
not express a unanimous literary judgment, for critics are not wanting who
assert that _Daniel Deronda_ is the highest expression of the author's
genius.
The general character of all these novels may be described, in the author's
own term, as psychologic realism. This means that George Eliot sought to do
in her novels what Browning attempted in his poetry; that is, to represent
the inner struggle of a soul, and to reveal the motives, impulses, and
hereditary influences which govern human action. Browning generally stops
when he tells his story, and either lets you draw your own conclusion or
else gives you his in a few striking lines. But George Eliot is not content
until she has minutely explained the motives of her characters and the
moral lesson to be learned from them. Moreover, it is the development of a
soul, the slow growth or decline of moral power, which chiefly interests
her. Her heroes and heroines differ radically from those of Dickens and
Thackeray in this respect,--that when we meet the men and women of the
latter novelists, their characters are already formed, and we are
reasonably sure what they will do under given circumstances. In George
Eliot's novels the characters develop gradually as we come to know them.
They go from weakness to strength, or from strength to weakness, according
to the works that they do and the thoughts that they cherish. In _Romola_,
for instance, Tito, as we first meet him, may be either good or bad, and we
know not whether he will finally turn to the right hand or to the left. As
time passes, we see him degenerate steadily because he follows his selfish
impulses, while Romola, whose character is at first only faintly indicated,
grows into beauty and strength with every act of self-renunciation.
In these two characters, Tito and Romola, we have an epitome of our
author's moral teaching. The principle of law was in the air during the
Victorian era, and we have already noted how deeply Tennyson was influenced
by it. With George Eliot law is like fate; it overwhelms personal freedom
and inclination. Moral law was to her as inevitable, as automatic, as
gravitation. Tito's degeneration, and the sad failure of Dorothea and
Lydgate in _Middlemarch_, may be explained as simply as the fall of an
apple, or as a bruised knee when a man loses his balance. A certain act
produces a definite moral effect on the individual; and character is the
added sum of all, the acts of a man's; life,--just as the weight of a body
is the sum of the weights of many different atoms which constitute it. The
matter of rewards and punishments, therefore, needs no final judge or
judgment, since these things take care of themselves automatically in a
world of inviolable moral law.
Perhaps one thing more should be added to the general characteristics of
George Eliot's novels,--they are all rather depressing. The gladsomeness of
life, the sunshine of smiles and laughter, is denied her. It is said that
once, when her husband remarked that her novels were all essentially sad,
she wept, and answered that she must describe life as she had found it.
WHAT TO READ. George Eliot's first stories are in some respects her best,
though her literary power increases during her second period, culminating
in _Silas Marner_, and her psychological analysis is more evident in
_Daniel Deronda_. On the whole, it is an excellent way to begin with the
freshness and inspiration of the _Scenes of Clerical Life_ and read her
books in the order in which they were written. In the first group of novels
_Adam Bede_ is the most natural, and probably interests more readers than
all the others combined. _The Mill on the Floss_ has a larger personal
interest, because it reflects much of George Eliot's history and the scenes
and the friends of her early life. The lack of proportion in this story,
which gives rather too much space to the girl-and-boy experiences, is
naturally explained by the tendency in every man and woman to linger over
early memories.
_Silas Marner_ is artistically the most perfect of George Eliot's novels,
and we venture to analyze it as typical of her ideals and methods. We note
first the style, which is heavy and a little self-conscious, lacking the
vigor and picturesqueness of Dickens, and the grace and naturalness of
Thackeray. The characters are the common people of the Midlands, the hero
being a linen weaver, a lonely outcast who hoards and gloats over his
hard-earned money, is robbed, thrown into utter despair, and brought back
to life and happiness by the coming of an abandoned child to his fire. In
the development of her story the author shows herself, first, a realist, by
the naturalness of her characters and the minute accuracy with which she
reproduces their ways and even the accents of their speech; second, a
psychologist, by the continual analysis and explanation of motives; third,
a moralist, by showing in each individual the action and reaction of
universal moral forces, and especially by making every evil act bring
inevitable punishment to the man who does it. Tragedy, therefore, plays a
large part in the story; for, according to George Eliot, tragedy and
suffering walk close behind us, or lurk at every turn in the road of life.
Like all her novels, _Silas Marner_ is depressing. We turn away from even
the wedding of Eppie--which is just as it should be--with a sense of
sadness and incompleteness. Finally, as we close the book, we are conscious
of a powerful and enduring impression of reality. Silas, the poor weaver;
Godfrey Cass, the well-meaning, selfish man; Mr. Macey, the garrulous, and
observant parish clerk; Dolly Winthrop, the kind-hearted countrywoman who
cannot understand the mysteries of religion and so interprets God in terms
of human love,--these are real people, whom having once met we can never
forget.
_Romola_ has the same general moral theme as the English novels; but the
scenes are entirely different, and opinion is divided as to the comparative
merit of the work. It is a study, a very profound study of moral
development in one character and of moral degeneracy in another. Its
characters and its scenes are both Italian, and the action takes place
during a critical period of the Renaissance movement, when Savonarola was
at the height of his power in Florence. Here is a magnificent theme and a
superb background for a great novel, and George Eliot read and studied till
she felt sure that she understood the place, the time, and the people of
her story. _Romola_ is therefore interesting reading, in many respects the
most interesting of her works. It has been called one of our greatest
historical novels; but as such it has one grievous fault. It is not quite
true to the people or even to the locality which it endeavors to represent.
One who reads it here, in a new and different land, thinks only of the
story and of the novelist's power; but one who reads it on the spot which
it describes, and amidst the life which it pictures, is continually haunted
by the suggestion that George Eliot understood neither Italy nor the
Italians. It is this lack of harmony with Italian life itself which caused
Morris and Rossetti and even Browning, with all his admiration for the
author, to lay aside the book, unable to read it with pleasure or profit.
In a word, _Romola_ is a great moral study and a very interesting book; but
the characters are not Italian, and the novel as a whole lacks the strong
reality which marks George Eliot's English studies.
MINOR NOVELISTS OF THE VICTORIAN AGE
In the three great novelists just considered we have an epitome of the
fiction of the age, Dickens using the novel to solve social problems,
Thackeray to paint the life of society as he saw it, and George Eliot to
teach the fundamental principles of morality. The influence of these three
writers is reflected in all the minor novelists of the Victorian Age. Thus,
Dickens is reflected in Charles Reade, Thackeray in Anthony Trollope and
the Brontë sisters, and George Eliot's psychology finds artistic expression
in George Meredith. To these social and moral and realistic studies we
should add the element of romance, from which few of our modern novelist's
can long escape. The nineteenth century, which began with the romanticism
of Walter Scott, returns to its first love, like a man glad to be home, in
its delight over Blackmore's _Lorna Doone_ and the romances of Robert Louis
Stevenson.
CHARLES READE. In his fondness for stage effects, for picturing the
romantic side of common life, and for using the novel as the instrument of
social reform, there is a strong suggestion of Dickens in the work of
Charles Reade (1814-1884). Thus his _Peg Woffington_ is a study of stage
life from behind the scenes; _A Terrible Temptation_ is a study of social
reforms and reformers; and _Put yourself in his Place_ is the picture of a
workingman who struggles against the injustice of the trades unions. His
masterpiece, _The Cloister and the Hearth_ (1861), one of our best