UNIVERSITE DE ROUEN
1
THESE
pour le
DOCTORAT de 3 Cvcle
SOME
ASPECTS
OF GEORGE
ELIOT'S
Narrative Technique in Four Novels
ADAM BEDE
THE MILL 00 THE F'I.OOS
Justine ELO MINTSA
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. ...... . .
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. . . .
. . . .
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,
DlRECl'EUR DE THESE: M. Jean-Pierre VERNIER
DECEMBRE 1977

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.,
To my father, who
initiated me ~D literature.
To my mother, for her love and care.

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Justine ELO MINTSA
Some aspects of George Eliot's Narrative Technique
in Four Novels:
Adam Bede
The Mill on the Floss
~,1i ddl ema rch
Daniel Deronda
(These preparee en vue de 1 'obtention du Doctorat de
Troisieme Cycle d'Anglais).
Directeur de These
J. P. VERNIER
J

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CON TEN T S
=================
Pages
Ac know l edgements
I
Biographical Note
I I I
Introduction
1
Notes on the Introduction
PART ONE
SOME ASPECTS OF GEORGE ELIOT'S NARRATIVE TECHNIQUE
CHAPTER I : PRESENTATION OF THE CHARACTERS
4
I - MIDDLEGROUND CHARACTERS AND THEIR FUNCTION
4
I - In relation to the Protagonist
4
1- As Ennobling Agent
5
2 • As Deflating Agent
6
3 .
Providing Ironic Analogy
9
4 . As Contrasting Parallel
11
5 . As Progress
Indicator
27
11 - In relation to Theme
29
1. As Authority
29
2. Comic Relief
32
III - In relation to the Background
36
Conclusion.
38

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Notes on the "Middleground characters and their function"
II - THE PROTAGONISTS
39
I - Basic selection
39
II - Thematic Approach
40
1. Quest of Wisdom
40
2. Struggle to Wi9dolll
46
3. The Lost Ones
53
4. Conclusion.
54
Notes on "The Protagonists ll
CHAPTER 11
SCENIC PRESENTATION
56
a) Incident
56
b) Setting
60
I Crisis and Decision
64
II Scene and Time Sequence.
72
Notes on "Scenic Presentation"
CHAPTER III : IMAGERY
105
I Definition
105
II Imagistic Process in Eliot's Fiction
106
,-
1. Vertical Approach
106
a) Ascending Correspondance
107
b) Descending Corraspondance
107
2.
Horizontal Process
109
le..
3.
The Con ce n t rat ~ APPI" 0 a ch.
117

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III Eliot's Sources of Imagery - Its Use and
119
Function.
l.
Imagery dtawn from Nature
119
a) IVI an and Nature
119
b) Human and Animal
134
c) Man and Childhood
138
2.
Imagery drawn from Art
144
a) Theatre
144
b) Music
166
Notes on IIlmageryll
CHAPTER IV
SH1BOL ISM
183
I - Definition
183
I I
Conventional Symbol
Eliot and the Bible
1R4
III - Specific Symbol
203
IV - Shift of Mode
211
Notes on "Symbolism ll
PART TWO
215
EVOLUTION OF SOME ASPECTS OF GEORGE ELIOT'S NARRATIVE TECHNIQUE
CHAPTER I : STRUCTURE AND FORM
217
2 J. 7
I - ADAM BEDE
Notes on Adam Bede

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Pages
11 - THE MILL ON THE FLOSS
243
Notes on the Mill on the Floss
III - MIDDLEMARCH
255
IV - CONCLUSION
271
Notes on Middlemarch, on Daniel Deronda, and the
. Conclusion.
CHAPTER 11 : NARRATIVE AND DESCRIPTIVE METHODS
274
I - First Phase
274
11 - Second Phase
280
III - Con c lu s t on
Not e son the Descri pt i ve and Na r rat i ve ~1 et hod s .
CONCLUSION
294
I - Eliot and the Victorian Readers
294
11 - General
Conclusion
Notes on the Conclusion.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
308

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r
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
================
r have tried to find my way by reference to other
criticism. Some aspects of George Eliot's narrative techni-
que, though conspicuously.and masterly displayed in her no-
vels, yet remain blurred to the vision of the profane. Had
it not been for the rigorous analyses of critics better ac-
quainted with Eliot's sutleties, this attempt to describe
and analyse her narrative technique would have been even
more strenuous. Yet, once the acquaintance firmly made, r
derived a real pleasure from discovering in her novels, the
immersed treasures of her technique.
Among all the valuable writing that any Eliot
Scholar must survey, I wish to acknowledge a particular
debt to the work of W.J. Harvey.
I wish to acknowledge my various indebtedness to
Monsieur Vernier for the encouragement, advice, and sugges-
tions which I have received from him during the course of
this work; and for giving me the possibility to lend books
from the British Museum '.
I am most grateful to Madame Bolton, Professeur
agregee at 1 'Universite de Picardie, for
her
kind encou-
ragement.

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I I
And among those scholars to whom I am deeply in-
debted, it is a pleasure to acknowledge Mr Atkinson, Tutor
at the Polytechnic of Central London, who has enriched my
acquaintance of Eliot. I am grateful to Mr Dickson of the
~est London College for his presentation of the Victorian
background.
For their interest, their intelligence and their
forebearance, I wish to thank ANGUE Honorine, ONDO Athanase,
AKOMA Rosalie, OVONO Fran~ois,
AKOULOU Albert, MINKO Fran-
~ois, MASSICOT Nicole, NDAM Claude and BANGBA Antoinette.
Special thanks are due top'pa ~re
Wishing that this will do justice to all the at-
tention kindly bestowed on me.

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III
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
=================
1819
George Eliot (Nary Ann Evans Gross) was born on
November 22 at South Farm, Atbury, Warwickshire.
She received an ordinary education and, upon lea-
ving school at the age of sixteen, embarked on a
program of independent study to further her intel-
1ectua 1 growth.
1841
She moves with her father to Coventry where the
influence of IISkeptics and rationalists ll sway her
from an intense religious devoutness to an even-
tual break with the church.
1846
Publication of her translation of Strauss·slllife
of Jesus ll.
1849
The death of her father leaves her with a small
legacj and the freedom to pursue her literary in-
clinations.
1851
She becomes the assistant editor of the IIWestmins-
ter Review ll a position she held for three years.
1854
She meets George Henry Lewes, the gifted editor
of the "Le e de r ? , whom she could not marry because

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IV
he had a wife living whom he was unable to divorce.
He was to become Eliot's advisor and companion for
the next twenty-four years.
Publication of her translation of Fueurbach's
IIEssence of Christianityll.
1855
She begins writing fiction.
1858
Publication of her first book IIScenes of Clerical
Life ll.
1859
IIAdam Bedell.
1860
11The
~1 ill 0 nth e F10 s S 11
1861
11
Si 1a s ~1 arm e r 11
1863
11
Romola 11
1866
11
Felix Holt "
1868
11
The Spani sh Gypsey (dramatic poem) 11
1872
11
Hiddlemarch"
1874
11
Juba 1 and Other Poems 11
1876
11
Daniel Deronda 11

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v
1878
The death of Lewes Leaves her stricken and lo-
ne1y .
1879
IlImpressions of Theophrastus Such (essays).
1880
Marries John Cross, a friend of long standing,
and very much younger than herself, on May 6.
On December 22 on that year, in London, she dies
a f t e r a : brief illness.

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1
INTRODUCTION
============
The criticism that George Eliot was unreadable
lived on till after the Second World War. Lord David Cecil
in his Ean-ty Vic..:to'tial1. Nove-tiJ.>.:t (1934) says that lilt is not
just that she is not read that her books stand on the shel-
ves unopened.
If people do read her, they do not enjoy her".
This he seems to attribute to her moral point of view. "The
virtues of her admiration, industry, self-restraint, cons-
cientiousness, are drab, negative sort of virtues; they are
school-teachers' virtues" (1). But ten years later, F.R.Lea-
vis in his revaluation of George Eliot, saw the moral ele-
ment as the essence of her superiority. Her reputation has
now risen to the point where many authorities again place
her amongst the best of English novelists.
George Eliot's art indeed cannot be separated from
her ethical habit of mind. She is quite plainly a novelist
who is also a ~~ge. The didactic intention is perfectly clear
in her novels.
In Adam Bede, she says that so far from inven-
ting ideal characters, her " strongest effort is ... to give
a faithful account of men and things as they have mirrored
themselves in my mind" (2). Realistic pictures of obscure
mediocrity serve a didactic purpose
"These fellow-mortals
everyone, must be accepted as they are
these people ...
it is needful you should tolerate, pity and love: it is

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2
these more or less uglYt stupid t inconsistant people whose
movements of goodness you should be able to admire ll (3).
She replaces God by HumanitYt Faith by love and
Sympathy. This is translated into her work by the elimina-
tion of the supernatural t the elevation of the natural .a nd
the subordination of intellect to heart and thought to fee-
1i n g .
There are many ways of dividing Eliot's work and
of judging the parts it falls into. Some critics separate
the novels based
on recollected personal experience - among
which Adam B~d~
and
Th~ M~tt on ~h~ Fto~~ - from the
more laboured - M~ddt~ma!l..c.h and
Van~~t V~!l..onda - and call
the first grouPt novels of IIfeelings ll and therefore good t
the second t novels of lIintellect ll and therefore t inferior.
Other critics well accept these lines of division but with
reversed judgment: The novels of feelings t they saYt are
flowed by sentimental indulgence t the novels of intellect
.::",
'I
alone are mature.
My primary object in this study is not to demons-
trate the absolute superiority of one period to one other -
each period t I presume t contains its beauties and its ble-
mishes - rather t I want to detect the few aspects which al-
low us to distinguish the early period from the later period.

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3
My aim in this study is to attempt to descr~be
and analyse those aspects which, to my mind, present a par-
ticular interest in George Eliot's narrative technique. Some
- such as mode of characterization, use of image and symbol
presentation of the scence - I selected because they are
characteristic of Eliot's technique. Others - narrative and
descriptive method - because they reveal, if considered
chronologically, the evolution of George Eliot's technique.
I have therefore arranged the work in two main
parts.
The first part is devoted
to the description and
study of Eliot's practice of fiction - in the selected as-
pects. This is without regard to the period of the novels.
The second part is the comparative study of the
four novels. They are considered chronologically.
At the same time, this study is intended as a
brief account of George Eliot's major themes.

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.. ,
Notes on the Introduction
I.
Cecil David . Early Victorian Novelists
London : Constable
CO Ltd,
(1934)
1963
2.
Adam Bede, ch 17 P.
174
3.
Ibid,
ch 17 P.
175

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4
C H APT E R
I
=================
PRESENTATION OF THE CHARACTERS
==============================
I - MIDDLEGROUND CHARACTERS AND THEIR FUNCTION -
The middleground of George Eliot's human landsca-
pe mediates between the protagonits and a host of background
figures who act as chorus, giving substance to our sense of
a community in action. These middleground characters are
endowed with.a wide range of cosmic possibilities which ac-
counts for their
not less wide range of functions. These
secondary characters though they are delights in themselves
owe
their existence to the protagonist, and through the
protagonist, to the main issue. Their primary function is
to aid in the portrayal of the main characters and to help
express
the main ideas and principles.
We may now turn to the differ~nt functions that
George Eliot attributes to her middleground characters.
1°) - In Relation to the Prota90nist -
The role of the secondary character in relation
to the protagonist is multifunctional

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5
Secondary characters help to create a moral con-
flict and make the protagonist appear in a heroic or noble
light. For instance, in the situation in which Daniel Deron-
da the protagonist
and Hans Meyrick the secondary character
are in love with the same woman, the reader's sympathy and
admiration are with the main character. Hans's love and ve-
ry existence is that which moves Daniel to sacrifice his
passion for friendship:
11
He was conscious of that peculiar irritation
which will sometimes befall a man whom other are in-
clined to trust as a mentor - the irritation of per-
ceiving that he is supposed to be entirely off the
same plane of desire and temptation as those who con-
fess to him (1).
There is a parallel example in Middlema~ch with
Farebrother the protagonist, Fred Vincy the secondary cha-
racter and Mary Garth the beloved. Farebrother is sent to
propose to Mary on Fred's behalf. After Mary's conditional
acceptance, Farebrother proclaims
"I hope I shall live
to join your hands. God bless you
"(2). And Mary, alar-
Mod, begs him to stay for tea while "her eyes filled with
tears, for something indefinable, something like the reso-
lute sup~ression of a pain in Mr Farebrother's manner, made

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6
her feel suddenly miserable, as she had once felt when she
saw her father's hands trembling in a moment of trouble ll(3)
but the vicar, after politely declining Mary's invitation
to stay 11was 0 n h0 r se bac k a ga -j n hav i ng go ne ma gna. ni m0 usly
through a duty much harder than the renunciation of whist,
or even than the writing of penitential meditations 11 (4).
It is in this respect that Hans Meyrick and Fred Vincy act
as ennobling agents to Daniel Deronda and M. Farebrother,
respectively. Hans and Fred make them appear in specific
circumstances necessary to Eliot's firm and concrete charac-
terization of Deronda and Farebrother. Always in such cases,
the author at the erld reveals the thought of the protagonist
in order t~ emphasize the value of the sacrifice.
We will see later on that there is very little
of the merely sentiment-al-romantic in Eliot's novels. Though
Eliot often has a tendency to idealize her characters moral-
ly, she balances this by bringing in characters who serve
as deflating agents.
If Dinah partly escapes from being idealized by
George Eliot, it is because Dinah's dedication is constant-
ly qualified by the shrewd worldliness of Mrs Poyser. To
illustrate this, here is a dialogue between Mrs Poyser and
Dinah :

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7
IIBut where's the use a ' talking, if ye wonna be
persuaded, and settle down like .any other woman in her sen-
ses, i' stead a'wearing yourself out with walking and prea-
ching, and giving away every penny you get, so as you've
nothing saved against sickness; and all the things you've
got i l the world, I verily believe, 'ud go into a bundle
no bigger nor a double cheese. And all because you've got
notions i I your head about religion more nor what's i I the
Catachism and the Prayer - book ll •
IIBut not more than what's in the Bible, Aunt ll ,
said Dinah.
11 Yes ,
and the Bib 1e too, for t hat ma t t e r 11, ~l r s
Poyser rejoined, rather sharply; lIElse why shouldn't them
as know best
what's in the Bible - the parsons and people
as have got nothing to do but learn it - do the same as you
do ? But, for the matter o' that, if everybody was to do
1i ke you, the world must come to a standstill; for if every-
body tried to do without house and home, and with poor eating
and drinking, and was always talking as we must despise the
things 0' the world, as you say, I should like to know where
the pick 0 1 the stock, and the corn, and the best new-milk
cheeses I ud be running after everybody else to preach to'
em; istead o' bringing up families, and laying by against
a bad harvest. It stands to sense as that canlt be the right
re 1i gion 11 (5).

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6
We know that Mrs Poyser1s is a mistaken and par-
tial view point. It is the collective voice of the materia-
listic Loamshire which fails to understand the spiritual
world of Stonyshire . Yet, so attractive is the speaker, so
vividly is she realized, that the weight of our sympathy is
with her rather than with Dinah. Nevertheless, there being
some truth in Mrs Poyser1s viewpoint, we are forced to re-
examine Dinah. We no longer take her ideal moral qualities
for granted. As she is somehow ridiculed by Mrs Poyser, we
leave our respect and admiration for her in suspension. This
use of secondary character in creating an ironic frame, which
qualifies our response to the protagonists, is a constant
and important device in George Eliot's novels. Again, when
Mr Brooke in M,[ddie.manc.h says of VIill
: IIWell, you know, he
may turn out a Byron, a Chatterton, a Churchill - that sort
of thing - there's no knowing 11 (6), the comedy lies not
only in the heterogeneity of Mr Brooke's list but also in
the i nappropri ateness of hi s reference to VJi 11 1s amateur
artistic inclinations. So Will, the idealist, who is pre-
sented as Casaubon's moral, social and spiritual antithesis
is here deflated by Mr. Brooke.
We now can deduce that ennobling agents set the
protagonist into action, while the deflating agents simply
comment on those actions.

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9
Another function of the secondary character,
which George delights and exce11s in, is thatof providing
comic parallels or analogies to the main characters. This
ultimately gives us ironic views of the central issues of
the novel.
The most striking example is the role of Bessy
!
Cranage in Adam Bede. She at once parallels and contrasts
with Hetty. We meet her first when Dinah is preaching in
the village. green; she is a particular object of compassion
for the Methodists "because her
hair, being turned back
under a cap which was set at the top of her head, exposed
to view an ornament of which she was much proujer than her
red cheeks - namely, a pair of large round e~r - rings with
false garnets in them" (8). This foreshadows Hetty in her
bedroom as she is pathetically parading before the blotched
and tarnished mirror. Her gimcrack adornments are the exact-
ly right material correlative of her limited, romantic dreams:
It was on old scarf,. full of rents, but it would
make a becoming border round her shoulders, and set off th!
whiteness of her upper arm. And she would take out the lit
t1e ear-rings she had in her ears - oh! how her aunt had
scolded her for having her ears bored ! - and put in those
large ones. They were but coloured glass, dnd gilding, but

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10
if you didn't know what they were made of, they looked just
as well as what the ladies wore (9).
The effect of Dinah's preaching is to make Bessy
repent in terror, but this is short-lived: as soon as Dinah
leaves the district, Bessy reverts to her former ways. In
this she indeed contrasts with Hetty. Initially, Dinah has
far less effect on Hetty than on Bessy, but in the long run
far more (Incidently, this scene on the village green fore-
•
shadows in different ways both the bedroom scene in chapter
15, and the scene in the prison cell
).
Atone point Eliot makes more explicit the parallel
between
the two girls:
Bessy .•. had taken to her ear-rings again since
Dinah's departure, and was otherwise decked out in such smal'
finery as she could have looked into poor Betty's heart
would have seen a striking resemblance between her little
hopes and anxieties and Hetty's. (10;.
Eliot's ways of drawing iro~ic analogies are two-
fold. The first way consists in two characters depicted in
parallel, the one being the parody of the other, as we have
just seen with Hetty and Bessy. The other technique necessi-
tates a secondary character who, in conversations, draws ana-
logies about the protagonist,' these analogies being for the

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11
most
part ironic. This is Mr. Brooke's field, and illustra-
tions abound. But the one to me which seems typical is the
following: in chapter 28 of Middt~ma~ch, he unconsciously
makes a parody of Casanbon's sterile pedantry. He remarks
to Casaubon that he hopes that Ladislaw 11 will stay with
11
me a long while and we shall make something of my document s ? •
From this comic analogy is derived the irony of his remarks
on Casaubon • 11 I overdid it at one t i me ... about topogra-
phy, ruins, temples. I thought I had a clue, but I saw it
would carry me too far and nothing might come of it. You
may go any lenght in that sort of thing and nothing may come
of it, y ou " (12). We can imagine how Casanbon's IIKey to all
My t h0 log i e s 11 -s hr i vel sup ins uc hac 0 nt e set. 0f co ur se, Mr
Brooke speaks truer than he knows.
Bessy and Nr Brooke, by providing ironic analo-
gies or parodies to the protagonists, illustrate the main
issues of the novels, namely, Hetty's vanity and Casaubon's
unproductivity.
At other times, the secondary character is presen-
ted under identical circunstances as those of the protago-
nist. This emphasizes different qualities of the protagonist
that Eliot is eager to put farth. This is done most effecti-
vely by Eliot through contrast. We shall take an example

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1 2
from M~ddtemanch. Mary strikingly differs from Rosamond in
all respects- physically, mentally, socially, morally and
spiritually. The first contrast between them is brought a-
bout by mirrors, which evoke their physical differences
"Rosamond and Mary ... stood at the toilette-table
near the window while Rosamond took off her hat, adjus-
ted her veil, and applied
little touches of her fin-
ger-tips to her hair ... Mary seemed
all the plainer
standing at an angle between the two nymphs. The one
in the glass, and the one out of it, who looked at
each other with eyes of heavenly blue, deep enough to
hold the most exquisite meanings an ingenious beholder
could put into them, and deep enough to hide the mea-
nings of the owner if these should happen to be less
exquisite. Only a few children in Middlemarch looked
"
blond by the side of Rosamond, and the slim figure dis-
played by her riding-habit had delicate undulations.
In fact, most men in Middlemarch, except her brothers,
held that Miss Vincy was the best girl in the world.
Mary Garth, on the contrary, had the aspect of an ordi-
nary sinner :. she wa~ brown; her curley dark hair was
rough and stubborn; her stature was low; and it would
not be true to declare, in satisfactory antithesis,that
she had all the virtues. Plainless has its peculiar
temptations and vices quite as much as beauty; it is
apt either to feign amiability, or, not feigning it,

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1 3
to show all the repulsiveness of discontent: at any
rate, to be called an ugly thing in contrast with that
lovely creature your companion, is apt to produce some
effect beyond a sense of fine veracity and fitness in
the phrase. At the age of two - and - twenty Mary had
certainly not attained that perfect good sense and good
principle which are usually recommended to the less for-
tunate girl
... Her shrewdness had a streak of satiric
bitterness continually renewed and never carried utter-
ly out of sight except by a strong current of gratitu-
de towards those who, instead of telling her that she
ought to be contended, did something to make her so.
Advancing womanhood had tempered her plainness, which
was of a good human sort ... For honesty, truthtelling
fairness, was Mary's reigning virtue (13)
We will
note how the portrayal of the two charac-
ters gradually moves from physical to psychological, and
moral. The more Eliot insists on a quality or a feature in
the one character, the more the reverse quality is emphasi-
zed in the oth~r. Surely, contrast, as a device for depth
to a character is far more effective
than a plain descrip-
tion of an isolated character. Mary afterwards dramatizes
her role by exclaiming:
11
What a br 0\\'/ n pat c h , I a m by the s i de. 0 f you, R0 sy ! 11 ( 14 ) .
Once this physical contrast is established the reader is
prompted to look for further contrasts between the two girl~

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1 4
which is precisely Eliot's aim. Thus, else where in the book,
though Rosamond and ~ary are presented in isolation, their
attitudes are diametrically opposed. This can be illustra-
ted by two passages revealing the two girls
views about
love:
She (Rosamond) judged of her own syntoms as those
of awakening love, and she held it still more natural
that Mr Lydgate should have fallen in love at first
sight of her. These things happened so often at balls
and why not by the morning light, when the complexion
showed all the better for it ? Rosamond, though no ol-
der than Mary, was rather used to being fallen in love
with, but she, for her part, had remained indifferent
and fastidiously critical towards both fresh sprig and
faded bachelor (15).
11
To me (Mary) it is one of the most odious
things in a girl's life, that there must always be some
supposition of falling in love coming between her and
any man who is kind to her, and to whom she is grate-
ful. I should have thought that I at least, might have
been safe from all that. I have no ground for the non-
sensical vanity of fancying everybody who comes near me
is in love with me " (16).
Beside the realistic, modest and almost prosaic

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1 5
Mary, Rosamond appears vain, coquettish. Rosamond is used
to being fallen in love with and thinks herself irresisti-
ble. This feature of her character foreshadows her crisis
with Hill Ladislaw : Rosamond
IIhad felt stung and disap-
pointed by Will's resolution to quit ~liddlemarch, for in
spite of what she knew and guessed about his admiration for
Dorothea, she secretly cherished the belief that he had or
would necessarily come to have, much more admiration for
herself; Rosamond was one of those women who live much in
the idea that each man they meet would have preferred them
if the preference had not been hopeless. Mrs Casaubon was
all very well; but ~Iill's interest in her dated before he
knew Mrs Lydgate. Rosamond took his way of talking to her-
self, which was a mixture of playful fault - finding and
hyperbolical gallantry, as the disguise of a deeper feeling;
and in his presence she felt that agreeable titillation of
vanity and sense of romantic drama which Lydgate's presence
had no longer the magic to create ll (17). She even "co ns t r uc-
ted a little romance which was to vary the flatness of her
life: Will Ladislaw was to be a bachelor and live near her,
always to be at her comand, and have an understood though
never fully expressed passion for her, which would be sen-
ding out lambent flames every now and then in interesting
s ce ne s " (18). We know that all this is pure fancy, for Will'
s flame
in fact is burning for Dorothea. And the retribu-
tion to Rosamond1s vanity is her bitter disappointment.
Their criteria of a good husband further diffe-

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16
rentiate Rosamond
and Mary
And there was Mr Lydgate suddenly corresponding
to her ideal being altogether foreign to Middlemarch
carrying a certain air of distinction congruous with good
family, and possessing connections which affered vistas of
that middle-class heaven, rank; a man of talent, also, whom
it would be especially delightful to enslave ( not to wor-
(~)
ship, mind' leave that to Dorothea Brooke) ... Rosamond ...
I
was far on in the costume and introductions of her wedded
life, having determined on her house in Middlemarch, and
foreseen the visits she would pay to her husband's high-
bred relatives at a distance, whose finished manner she
could appropriate as thoroughly as she had done her school
accomplishments, preparing herself thus for vaguer eleva-
tions which might ultimately come. There was nothing finan-
cial, still less sordid, in her previsions : she cared abou~
what were considered rafinements, and not about the money
that was to pay for them (19).
Mary, on the contrary, does not base her choice
on Fred's heritage and birth in deciding to marry him, but
rather she values the man himself:
11 Don't
f ear for me, fat her t1, S aid ~1 a ry gr a vel y
(~) Bracket mine.

---

1 7
meeting his father's eyes; "Fred has always been very
good to me; he is kind-hearted and affectionate, and
not false, I think, with all his self-indulgence. But
I will never engage myself to one who has no 'manly
independence, and who goes on loitering away
his time
on the chance that others will provide for him. You
and my mother have taught me too much pride for that '120).
Mary says this though at this stage, she knows
that Fred is likely to inherit from his uncle Featherstone.
Thus set againts Mary - for whom personal quali-
ties are primary, Rosamond looks superficial, irresponsible
vain and materialistic. We will observe that no personal
quality whatever
enters in Rosamond's criteria of the ideal
man. Her criteria of the ideal man is based exclusively on
social status rather than on individual worth.
Even their attitudes towards the social status
of their respective families oppose the two girls
Rosamond felt that she might have been happier
if she had not been the daughter of a Middlemarch ma-
nufacturer. She disliked any thing which reminded her
that her mother's father had been an innkeeper (21).
And after her marriage to Lydgate,
Rosamond reflected that if any of those high-bred

---

18
cousins who were bores, should be induced to visit
Middlemarch, they would see many things in her own fa-
mily which might shock them. Hence it seemed desira-
ble that Lydgate should by - and - by get some firSt
rate position elsewhere than in Middlemarch (22).
We need not mention here that Rosamond owes all
her winning cards to her parents;
Mary's feelings towards her almost deprived pa-
rents is summed up on the following dialogue between her-
self and Mr Featherstone :
III suppose your father wanted your earnings ll ,
said old Mr Featherstone, with his usual power of un-
pleasant surmise, when Mary returned to him IIHe makes
but a tight fit, I reckon. You're of age now, you
ought to be s avinq for you r s e l f "
III consider my father and mother the best part
of my s elf, sir' sa i d Ma ry col d1y (2 3 ) .
Mary loves and gives. Rosamond takes the best and
steps on the rest. Let us linger further on the family cir-
cle in order to compare their respective concept of the fa-
mily unit. As unity manifests itself only in times of trou-
ble, we will select a critical moment to observe how each

---

1 9
reacts in similar situations. The following scene adequate-
ly IIplacesll Mary :
IIWhat is that Mary doesn't like, eh ?' said the
father, looking over his spectacles and pausing before
he opened his next letter.
"Bei nq among a lot of nin-compoop qi r l s " said
Alfred. lilt is the situation you had heard
of, Mary?1I
said Caleb, gently, looking at his daughter.
IIYes, father: The school at York. I have deter-
mined to take it. It is quite the best. Thirty-five
pounds a - year, and extra pay for teaching the smal-·
lest strummers at the piano ll.
"Poo r child! I wish she could stay at home with
us, Suzan ll, said Caleb, looking plaintively at his
wife.
IIMary would notbe happy without doing her dutyll,
said Mrs Garth, magisterially, conscious of having done
her own.
lilt wouldn't make me happy to do such a nasty du-
t y a s t hat 11, S aid A1f red a t whi c h ~l a r y and her fat her
laughed silently, but Mrs Garth said, gravely:

---

20
"Do find a fitter word than nasty, my dear Alfred
for everything that you think disagreeable. And suppo-
se that Mary could help you to go to Mr Hammer's with
the money she gets ? "
"That seems to me a great shame. But she's an old
brick, said Alfred, rising from his chair and pulling
Mary's head
backward to kiss her" (24).
Mary shares her parents'troubles. She sympathi-
zes with her family to whom she brings material and moral
con fort.
On the one hand, no help is required from spoi-
led Rosamond. On the other she hasn't the least concern for
her family who at this point· is steeped with troubles. She
distinctly dissociates her well-being from her family's.
What she sees is her only interest, as illustrates this short
dialogue between she and her father
"
Wit h t his" ,d i sap p0i n t men tab 0ut Fred, and
Parliament going to be !disso.lyed,and machine-breaking
, '
everywhere, and an e l e c t.io n comin90n ll •
IIDear papa! What can that have to do with my
marriage ?II (25).

---

21
I hope this little scene is explicit enough. One
last example will suffice our study of the contrasting pa-
tallel between Mary and Rosamond. Rosamond beguiles her fa-
ther into accepting her marriage, while Mary remains appre-
hensive with regards to Fred even after her father is con-
vinced of Fred's reformation. The irony is that Rosamond's
marriage is a failure while Mary and Fred live "happily
everafter".
Indeed, the list of contrasts could go on and on,
but the point I want to make is that
Eliot exploits her
secondary characters economically. That is, though their
part is almost exclusively functional, they are elaborated
in such a way as to be whole and interesting characters.
However, Eliot's use of the contrasting parallel
is not restricted to characters like Rosamond and Mary who
are contrasted in all aspects and throughout the novel. She
often uses the same device to emphasize just one quality
in a character. For instance, Lucy Dean cannot strictly be
considered Maggie1s parallel. Lucy is not adequately drama-
.tized, and her contrast to Maqqie is restricted to their
physical appearances. Eliot uses Lucy in selected scenes
and for the purpose of drawing further attention to Maggie '
s physical appearances
Maggie looked twice as dark as usual when she was

---

22
by the side of Lucy ... Certainly the contrast between the
cousins was conspicuous, and to superficial ·eyes was very
much to.the disadvantage of Maggie ... It was like the con-
trast between a rough, dark overgrown puppy and a white
kitten ... Maggie always looked at Lucy with delight. She
was fond of faucying a world where the people never got any
larger than children of thetr own age, and she made the
queen of it just like Lucy, with a little crown on her head
and a little sceptre in her hand •.. only the quen was Mag-
•
gie herself in Lucy·s form (26).
Lucy's beauty helps to emphasize Maggie's physi-
cal disadvantage. The different phases of the contrast,
which ends up with Maggie's fanciful transmutation into
Lucy's body and with the symbolical image of the beauty
queen, enforces Maggie·s desire to be beautiful. For as
we know, the theme of the"Ugly Duckl ing" is an important
element in Maggie's story. In this example, I tried to dis-
tinguish a parallel from a mere contrast. B6th fulfill, the
s ame fun ct ion but s t r uc tu r ally s pea kin 9 the 0 ne i san ex ten -
ded line in time and space while the other is just a point
on the same line.
But there again, all parallels are not sustained
throughout the novel. A secondary character might parallel
the protagonist ~nly in a unique situation to obtain a stri-
. king effect of irony, as illustrated in the coincidence

---

23
involving Gwendolen Harleth's ambition and Mi~ah's achieve-
ment. This coincidence is partly visible to Gwendolen
as
she goes to hear Mirah sing:
While turning her glance towards Mi~ah, she did
not neglect to exchange a bow and smile with Klessmer
as she passed. The smile seemed to each a lightming
flash-back on that morning when it had been her ambi-
tion to stand like the IIlittle Jewess ll was standing,
and survey a grand audience from the higher rank of
her talent - instead of which she was one of the ordi-
nary crowd in silks and gems, whose utmost performance
i t mu s t ob e to admire 0 r fin d fa u1t (2 7 ) .
Gwendolen and Klesmer ' partial recognition of the
irony encourages the reader to see it in full. Mirah and
Gwendolen each sing, one is a professional, the other an
ill-taught amateur. Each has the
opportunity to sell her-
self. But Mifah flees from her count, who, intentionally
or not, resembles Grandcourt not only in title, but in ap-
pearance, for he II wa s neither very young nor very old: his
hair and eyes were pale; and he was tall and walked heavily
and his face was heavy and qr a ve " (28).
Gwendolen's and Mir3h 's destinies-are paralleled
up to a certain point in the story. The first part of Mirah '
s life is simply narrated, while Gwendolen's is dramatized

---

throughout. However, Mirah perfectly fulfills Eliot's con-
trasting design.
In George Eliot's novels, contrast not only ser-
ves to emphasize points of characterization and situation,
but also to illustrate an idea. Here again she utilizes the
secondary character.
Typical of George Eliot who is essentially a mora-
list, virtue is a matter of capacity, and vice only calls
for sympathy, as suggests the contrast between Lydgate and
Fred. Though marriage appears the IIdetermining act ll in their
lives, it is itself determined by certain essential points
of the character's disposition. Fred's honest affection for
a girl endowed with virtuous qualities brings its reward.
The failure of Lydgate's intellectual aspirations, as the
consequence of a marriage contracted altogether. at the bid-
ding of his lower nature, is, of course, much more elabora-
tely treated than Fred's simple IIlove-problemll. But we must
not forget that Fred, as a secondary character, helps us to
see the main issue and must not distract our attention by
being too central.
Here is another example in which the characters
are embodiments of
ideas in a more obvious way. George Eliot
has a typical view on the conflict between theoretical con-
viction on ethics and human tenderness. Her presentation of

---

25
r el i qi ous men reflect her personal views on religion. This
appears in her treatment of Mr Irwine. M. Irwine, the par-
son of Loamshire, who is very carefully drawn, is an impor-
tant moral influence throughout the book. He is a favoura-
ble representative of preachers at the close of the last
century. The author has placed him in contrast to Mr Ryde,
who IIpreached a deal about doctrines ll , Adam relates to his
creator, but he
adds, III've seen pretty clear, ever since
Iwas a young un, as religions's something else besides doc-
trines and notions. I look at it as if the doctrines was
like finding names for your feelings, so as you can talk 0'
em when you've never known'em, just as a man may talk
1
0
tools when he knows their names, though he's never so much
as seen'em, still less handled'em 11 (29). To the contrary
Irwine was a noble man with a fine presence and kind nature.
He was a silent
influence, one who did not trouble his pa-
rish much with theological "no t i ons " but gave them the
example of a kind heart: lilt's summat like to see such a
man as that ilthe desk of a Su nday " says that rattling Nrs
Poyser, lIit's like looking at a full crop o'wheat, or a pas-
ture with a fine dairy o'cows in it ; it makes you t~ink
the world's c omf'o r t ab l e - l i ke " (30). It is to Mrs Poyser
again that we owe the following exquisite comparison bet-
ween r1r Irwine and Mr Ryde : IIMr Irwine was like a good meal
of victual, you were the better for him without thinking on
it, and Mr Ryde was like a dose o'physic, he gripped you
and wo r re t ed you, and aft era 11 he 1eft you mu c h the s ame II( 31 ) .

---

26
This idea reappears in M~ddtema~Qh in the shape
of Mr Farebrother who is contrasted to Mr Tyke: Mr Fare-
brother, parson of Middlemarch, is a man of the world)and
he even gambles/yet he displays pity and fairness, tact and
wisdom, and he knowns the secret of renunciation; Mr Tyke
is doctrinal and evangelical, yet inhumane. It was George
Eliot's constant objection to evangelicanism, that in its
emphasis upon the will and acts of implacable Deity, it ex-
tinguished human love. She extended this abjection to all
ethical maxisms that failed to regard human results: IIThe-
rei s nog enera 1 d0 c t r i nells he say sin ~1 i dd1emarc h 11Whi c h
is not capable of eating out our morality if unchecked by
the deep - seated habit of direct fellow-feeling with indi-
vidual f e l l ow-me n" (32). Fred Vincy feels no remorse for his
careless borrowings until he sees their actual effect upon
the Garth family: IIIndeed, we are most of us brought up in
the notion that the highest motive for not doing a wrong
is something irrespective of the beings who would suffer the
wrong 11 (33). This last quotation was an intentional digres-
sion by which I tried to further illustrate Eliot's convic-
tion that humanity is the true religion, not doctrines.
To conclude, we can observe that the parallel or
contrast, in other words the secondary character, is not es-
sential to the protagonist. But for effectiveness and rich-
ness, they are made concomitant in George Eliot·s mode of
characterization.

---

27
We have just seen how some characters evolve in
relation to the protagonist. But not all characters do evol-
ve. Among the secondary characters, there are static figu-
res who undergo no change whatsoever. They are presented as
such at the beginning of the novel
, and as such they re-
main to the end. Such characters might tend to be boring and
superfluous, but not when handled by George Eliot. Not only
do they serve a purpose, but they often are endowed with
loads of amusing idiosyncracies.
Effectively, the fixity of these characters acts
as a point of reference where y we can measure the develop-
ment of the protagonists. By viewing X- the protagonist -
who chang~ in relation to ¥ - static -, at different points
in the novel, we can measure the amount and kind of change
in X. Mrs Cadwallader doesn't change in Middlemarch , but
we can account for the alteration in Dorothea's character
by noting that she is much more vulnerab'e to Mrs Cadwalla-
der's criticisms at the beginning of the novel than at the
end.
Again in Middfeman~h, we are told about Lydgate,
early on in the novel, that "money had never been a motive
to him. Hence he was not ready to frame excuses for this
deliberate pursuit of small 9ains" - referring to Farebro-
ther's inclination to gamble. lilt was altogether repulsive

---

28
to him" (34). Before and after this, Fred Vincy is presen-
ted to us as an incurable gambler. Towards the end of the
novel, the reader finds Fred and Lydgate in a billiard-
room, where Lydgate is gambling. This marks a great change
in Lydgate's character. Eliot emphasizes:
But the last thing likely to have entered Fred's
expectation was that he should see his brother-in-law
Lydgate - of whom he had never quite dropped the old
opinion that he was a prig, and tremendously conscious
of his superiority - looking excited and betting, just
as he himself might have done. Fred felt a shock grea-
ter than he could quite account for by the vague know-
ledge that Lydgate was in debt ( ... ). It was a strange
reversal of attitudes: Fred's blond face and blue eyes
usually bright and careless, ready to give attention
to anything that held out a promise of amQsement, loo-
king involuntarily grave and almost embarrassed as if
by the 'sight of something unfitting: while Lydgate,
who had habitually an air of self - possessed strength
and a certain meditativeness that seemed to lie behind
his most observant attention, was acting, watching,
speaking with that excited narrow consciousness which
reminds one of an animal fierce eyes and retractile
claws (35).
Fred's reaction further stresses the change in

---

29
Lydgate. The irony reaches its clima~ as Fred attempts to
make Lydgate stop the game and leave the billiard-room.
Lydgate's evolution marks three phases when put against
the character of Fred Vincy : first of all, superior to
Fred, as he scorns gambling; Fred's equal when he takes up gam-
bling himself; and thirdly he finds himself in an inferior
position to Fred as he gives in and stops the game.
In conclusion, it is not by chance that some cha-
racters appear intermittently Or shadow other characters.
Indeed, they emerge at specific scenes to fulfill specific
functions. When their presence is no longer required by
the protagonist or for the carrying out of the main issue,
they drop back into darkness. That is the lot of the secon-
dary character.
11 - IN RELATION TO THEME -
1°) - As Authority -
It ;s all very well for George Eliot to produce
striking characters indulging themselves in acrobatic moral
adventures, but it remains for her to convince us. Once
again, the secondary character is employed. This time as
a tool in Eliot's persuasive technique~ Indeed, once the
general outline of their personalities is clear to the rea-
der, a carefully selected number of these characters are

---

30
used as authorities on views Eliot wishes to defend. Any
novelist, by creating the illusion of reality, may intro-
duce as many reliable witnesses as he needs. But because,
a succession of unimpeachable authorities would exasperate
the reader and eventually arouse his suspicious, we there-
fore find systematic variety in the natures of those au tho-
rities. These characters are commentators and they are gi-
ven, often casually and unemphatically, some truth or in-
sight which is concordant with the major Themes of the no-
ve1 .
Generally, these commentators are ironic. Their
remarks rather than expressing in a gnomic way some central
theme, cast an ironic light on some particular character or
situation. That is the impression we derive from Dorothea '
s interaction with the other· characters and the comments
of these other characters on her. These comments range from
stupidity as in the case of Sir James, to the IInegativell
wisdan
in Celia. Sir James says to Dorothea : IIYou seem to
have the power of di s c r t mt na t t on" (36), when we know this
is precisely what she lacks at the moment. Celia's view of
Dorothea is limited but just; Celia hates "no t t ons
To her,
v
v
Dorothea's reforming plans are just a IIfad ll. Also, she doen't
t hink 11 11 i t can ben ice tom a r r yam a n vi i t hag rea t sou 111 ( 37 )
By far the most important of these ironic commentators is
r~ r Br 0 0 ke. He say s toO 0 rot hea 11 I t h0 ug ht you 1i ked
your own opinion - liked it you know " (38), and we supply

---

31
the implied criticism. or again, on Dorothea's power of
discernment.
"Music of that sort I should enjoy", said Doro-
thea ...
"That kin d 0 f t hi ng i s not hea 1thy, my de a r I~ ,
said ~~r. Br-o oke " (39).
All
these comments cumulatively create a rich and
firmly controlled human context, in which Dorothea's value
is not denied but is seen in an ironic perspective of grea-
ter maturity than anything she herself can comprehend.
Sometimes, these commentors are in themselves
non - ironic. For instance, Caleb Garth, a Middlemarch
agriculturer speaks of "the soul of man ll , using a IIdeep
tone and a grave shake of the head" and IIl ooking on the
floor and moving his feet uneasily with a sense, that words
were
stantier
than thoughts" (40). He says this as he be-
comes our authority for the doubtless deep thought that
"Things hang together ll •
But after all, this is a simple man's version of
a momentous faith; but Eliot's viewpoint becomes more compre-
hensive and wider reaching because we ~ee it expressed by a
great variety of characters, in both simplistic and sophis-
ticated forms.

---

32
In other words the same truth is approached from
different angles by various characters. Thus, Mr Garth's
11 Thi ngs
ha ng t 0 get her 11 1ink s wit h ~1 r Trumbu11 "s 11 Tr i f 1e s
make the sum of human.things - nothing more important than
t r i f l e s " and will
Ladislaw's "Th e little waves make the big
o nes " and Brooke's IIWe're all one family you know - it's
all one cupb oa r d ".
All these are variants of an insight which close
to the heart of the moral vision of the novel. And this com-
plex
use of characters as authorities is fundamental to the
plausibility of Eliot's vision.
2°) - Comic Relief -
George Eliot had a strong sense of humour. It
was, however, rarely allowed full
play in her main charac-
ters and plots. Therefore, it tended to find its natural out-
let in secondary characters and subsidiary episodes. The
other reason why the comedy flowrishes chiefly among the
secondary characters is that these are, for the most part,
less disciplined in the overall structure of the novel. They
carry less of the moral burden than the protagonist, and
Eliot has therefore greater room for manoeuvring, and
greater
freedom to elaborate them for their own sake.
But this elaboration, this simple delight in idio-

---

33
syncrasies is rarely uneconomic.
It is not difficult to determine the function of
Mrs Poyser's idiosyncrasies. Comedy for its own sake is re-
conciled with comedy for the novel IS sake, as testifies
this scene from chapter 53, at the Poyser's Harvest Supper:
lIAh!lIsaid Bartle, sneeringly, lithe women are quick
enough - they're quick enough. They know the ri9hts of
a story before they hear
it, and can tell a man what
hi s thoughts are before he knows I em himsel fll.
11 Li" ke
e n0 ugh", s aid Hrs P0 y s er, 11for the men are
mostly so slow, their thoughts overrun I 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 broth to
be made on't. It's your dead chicks
take the longest
hat chi n ". How i ver, I' m not den y in' the worn en are f 00 -
lish : God almighty made ' em to match the men (41).
This comic clash of the sexes
is a traditional,
benighted and public joke; Hrs Poyser and Bartle Massey are
only playing the parts that their delighted audience expects
of them.
It is a kind of comic ceremonial being translated
into impulses and tensions which could lead to tragedy - the
kind of tragedy that is, in fact, played out in Adam Bede.

---

That this comic ritual can now be fully and whole - hearte-
dly performed is a significant sign of health and reassuran-
ce. The catastrophe has worked itself out and the community
is now back to normal. The course of nature has been re-es-
tablished.
Characters like Mrs Poyser also provide a kind
of relief analogous to comic relief. These characters are
generally fixed and definite. We come to know them thorou-
ghly after a short acquaintance and we can depend upon them
to remain much the same throughout the novel. Because they
are in that sense static they ease the tension by allowing
us to rest our attention on what is familiar and well-known
rather than exerting our attention to take in what is new
or developing.
On the other hand, it is impossible not to reali-
ze that behind the words spoken and the characteristic idiom
lie the accumulated inherited beliefs, the prejudices, expe-
riences and common sense which make up rural wisdom. Mrs
Poyser1s verbal mannerism, for instance, is more than a de-
lightful idiosyncrasy. I ~ven long hesitated between selec-
ting her as Eliot's eminent "aut ho r i t y '' and the brilliant
representative of George Eliot's humour. She could have suf-
ficed as an "au t hor t t y " because is often sententious. Her
wisdom pervades the novel as expressed by herself, or by some
other character or by the author.On oneoccasion even, the

---

35
author, unable to express herself in her own words, intro-
duces Adam Bede to
express the thought in his words, and
Adam finding his own language inadequate, is obliged to fall
back upon the expressions used by Mrs Poyser , whom he quo-
tes : "Mrs Poyser used to say Mr Irwine was like a good
meal of victual" (42). Her style even runs into proverbs:
"Folks must put up wi 'their own kin, as they put up with
their own noses - it's their own flesh and blood", and 11 If
the chaffcutter had the making of us, we should all be straw
I reckon ll ; and
"Il m not one o'those as can see the cat i'
the dairy an'wonder what she's come after ", and again "He's
welly like a cock as thinks the sun 's rose o'purpose to
hear him c r ow '", And so on. So that as an "a ut hor l ty " ~1rs
Poyser would have appeared too heavily loaded by her wisdom.
This seeming digression was an attempt to explain why I abs-
t a i ned fro m quo tin g ~, r s Po y s era san 11aut h0 r i t Y'". What we
were trying to show in fact, is Eliot's economic way of u-
sing humour. Mrs Poyser might not be an authority, but, as
we abserved
earlier her pungent style is more than a de-
lightful idiosyncrasy. The metaphors she uses reflect her
own character and also the habits, the aaily activities,
the religious tradition and the social conventions and as-
sumptions of her time and class.
I restricted my study
of the secondary charac-
ter as a comic relief to Mrs Poyser because she is Eliot's
gem in that respect. And I will conclude by insisting that

---

36
herself, and those she represents here, are not to be de-
fined in a bundle of functions. Our primary response to,
and sense of, these characters is of local interest as we
delight in their speech and actions.
III - IN RELATION TO THE BACKGROUND -
The Middleground characters are thoroughly exploi-
ted for their cosmic possibilities. Having delt with them
in relation to the protagonists and in relation to the the-
me, we see them now in relation to the background charac-
ters.
The main role of the background characters is to
give to the novel, a solid sense of community. Community
with its traditions
,religions, beliefs, wisdom and con-
ventions, from which the protagonists' conflicts are raised
and against which they are enacted. We will also note that
these background characters are not endowed with individua-
lities. They always manifest themses in group. We may then
wonder how, being thus denied their entities, can the back-
ground characters be set efficiently against the main cha-
racters ? The answer to this is simple: the Background are
denied individuality but not expression. Into Mrs Poyser's
witty aphorims, for instance, are compressed the wisdom of
a tradition, a compassion, honesty and acceptance of all
facts of life. In other words, she is the mouthpiece of the

---

37
community, the articulation of a way of life. This way of
life, as embodied in Mrs Poyser - natural, robust, earthly
commonsensical - is the life of Loamshire . This is set
against the way of life represented by Dinah. In the first
description she gives of Mrs Poyser, Eliot sets the key-
note for their distinctive natures:
The family likeness between her (Mrs Poyser) and
her niece Dinah Morris, with the contrast between her
keenness and Dinah's seraphic gentleness of expression,
might have served a painter as an excellent suggestion
for a Martha and Mary (43).
We supply the in ference that Mrs Poyser, like Mar-
tha, belongs to the common stock. And she gives expression
to her people. To the young and fervent Methodist, Mrs Pos-
ser gives way to her shrewd worldliness
"You're like the birds 0' th'air, and live nobody
knows how. I'd ha,been glad to behave to you like a
mother's sister, if you'd come and live i' this coun-
try, where there's some shelter and victual for man and
beast, and folks don't live on the waked hills, like
poultry a -scratching on a gravel bank. And then you
might get married to some decent man, and there'd be
plenty ready
to have you, if you'd only leave off that
preaching (44).
(AB. ch.6. p.84).

---

38
According to the community of Loamshire, this is
what Dinah's dedication comes to : not only is it an unre-
warding vocation, but it is not the right one for a young
woman whose sole alternative is to marry.
In conclusion, the mass which constitutes the back-
ground characters and contributes to the solidity of the
novel is not handicapped in terms of expression, since the
secondary characters are their mouthpieces. On the other
hand, if the background characters were endowed with indi-
viduality, they would inevitably be obtrusive
All things
considered, the backgrownd are more effective in their la-
tent, quiet, dormant mode.
CONCLUSION
The different groups of characters in George Eliot's
novels reflect the hierarchical pattern of any type of so-
ciety. We have the protagonist for the leader, the back-
ground
for the mass and the middleground for the mediator.

---

Notes on the
'Middlegrrunrl Charc:cters
and
their Function'
I. George Eliot,
Daniel DERONDA I ,(Hazell Watson and Viney Ltd,
Penguin Books, Dylesbury,
(1876,1974)
ch ,
37, P.
520)
2.
George Eliot, Middlemarch,
(Hazell Watson Viney Ltd,
Penguin
Books,
Dylesbury,
(1871-2 1975)
ch ,
37 P.
562
3.
Ibid, P.
562
4.
Ibid, P.
562
5. George Eliot, Adam Bede, (The New American Library Inc.
Si~et
Classics US)
1961, eh 6,
P.85
6. Middlemarch, Ope
cit.
ch 9 P.I07
7.
Ibid,
ch q P.
107
8. Adam Bede, Ope
cit.
ch 2 P.
31
9.
Ibid,
ch 15 P.
151
10.
Ibid,
ch 25 P.
266
11. Middlemarch,
ch 28 P.
309
12.
Ibid,
ch 28 P.
309
13.
Ibid,
ch 12 p.p.
139-40
14.
Ibid,
ch 12 P.
40
15.
Ibid,
ch 12 p.
145
16.
Ibid,
ch 14 P.
165
17.
Ibid,
ch 75 P.P.
809-10
18.
Ibid, ch 75 P.
810
19. 1bid, ch r2 P.P.
r45-6
20.
Ibid,
ch 25 P.
291
21.
Ibid,
ch 11 P.
r28

---

22.
Ibid, ch 36 P.
390
23.
Ibid, ch 25 P.
291
24.
Ibid, ch 40 P.P.
435-6
25.
Ibid,
ch 36 P.
388
26. George Eliot, The Mill on tho Floss,
(The New American Library Inc.
Siguet Classics, D.S.
1965)
Book I ch 7 P.P.
68-69
27. Middlemarch, ch 45 P.
67
28. Daniel Deronda ch 20 P.P.
258--59
29. Adam Beda ch 17, P.
180
30.
Ibid, ch.
8 P.
100
3r.
Ibid,
ch 17 P. 180
32. Middlemarch ch 61 P.
668
33.
Ibid,
ch 24 P.
281
34.
Ibid, ch 18 P.
209
35.
Ibid,
ch 66 P.
724
36.
Ibid, ch 3 P. 53
37.
Ibid,
ch 6 P.
79
38.
Ibid, ch 45 P. 66
39.
Ibid, ch 7
P.
90
40.
Ibid,
ch 4 P.
64
4r. Adam Bede ch 55 P.
494
42.
Ibid,
ch 17 P.
180
43.
Ibid, ch 6 P. 81
44.
Ibid, ch 6 P. 84

---

39
11 - THE PROTAGONISTS
1°) The basic selection -
Beyond the agents and voices, we find the prota-
gonists who form the arena in which the moral struggles
are played out. These characters, unlike those we have seen,
are ends in themselves, not functions or means to an end.
George Eliot's novels exist to reveal their moral dilemmas
and conflicts; and characteristically, she has several of
these moral centres interacting while competing for our
attention and sympathy.
The chief feature which gives expression to Eliot '
s vision lies in the strict selection she makes of which
characters and which events she is prepared to reveal in
full. This preliminary selection, necessarily made by any
artist, is easily overlooked in Eliot's novels, possibly
owing to the amplitude and solidity of her work. But let us
not be dupes. Eliot's selection is of crucial importance.
There are quite a few aspects of human nature which are ri-
gidly excluded from her work. For instance, no one in her
novels is consciously selfish; the least lovable characters
are merely half - aware of the pain they cause others. Mr

---

40
Tulliver in The Mill on the Flo66 is almost a freak fbr ex-
pressing real hatred, but then his feelings are constantly
thwarted and
mitigated in the course of events. Apart from
him, no one feels the sudden violent passions of anger, or
jealousy, or revenge. There is no sadist or masochist. No
one is savage. No one depraved.
Characteristically, Eliot1s main characters are
in some way or other concerned with wisdom. Actually most
of her novels are written round a character who either is
earnestly in quest of wisdom, or accidently comes to some
understanding. And in most of the cases, love or marriage
constitute the catalytic elements of those experiences.
2°) - Thematic approach
In her presentation of the protagonist, we are
constantly shown examples of the kind of person Eliot, as
a speculative moralist, is actually writing about. I shall
thus adopt a thematic approach to analyse the characters
as they enact tne theme.
1
- Quest of Wisdom -
Middlema~eh has a definite subject: an ardent
young girl framed for a larger moral life than circumstan-
ces often would -provide, yearns for a motive for sustained

---

41
spiritual effort but is given no opportunity. Eliot, in
'
other words undertook to depict the career of another Saint
Theresa.
Dorothea Brooke is a Saint Theresa, with a passio-
nate and ideal nature which demands an epic life. But she
is born out of due season into this period of faiths which
are disintegrating, and of social forces which are still
unorganised. Dorothea finds no epic life but one of mista-
kes. She fancies she ;s about to escape into a world of lar-
ge ideas and far-reaching actions. She is to sit at the feet
of a master and prophet, who, by a binding doctrine shall
compell her own small life and faith into connection with
the vast and amazing past; and she will occupy
that life
with action at once rational and ardent. In her conviction
to have found lithe pr-o phett
s he enthusiastically marries
i
v
Casaubon. But this strange prophet, with his Xisuthrus and
Fee-fo-fum, is but a pedant bringing to the great specta-
cle.of life nothing but a small, hungry and shivering self.
His consciousness is never transformed into the vividness
of thought, the ardour of a passion, the energy of an ac-
tion. He is scholarly but uninspired, ambitious but timid
scrupulous and dim-sighted: IIShe says he has a great soul.
A grea t b1add e r for dr i ed
pea s tor a t t 1e i n I 11, say s ~1 r s
Cadwallader (1). For poor Dorothea who thought Mr Casaubon
's mind an lIungauged reservoir ll with a IIl abirynthine exten-
s i on" (2) it is hard to be confronted with the reality re-
vea 1i ng her pro phet and mas t era s 11 ash ado \\'1 0 f a ma n11 (3)

---

42
a "p a r c hmen t c ode " (4), according to Sir J ame s Chettain,
and "a cursed
white-blooded pedantic coxcomb
11
according
to Will Ladislaw. The irony culminates when Mrs Cadwalla-
der makes fun of Mr Casaubon's studies. She says: IIS ome-
body put a drop under a magnifying-glass, and it was all
s em i colon san d par en the s e s 11 (5), and a ga in, 11 He (~1 r Cas a n-
bon) dreams foot- notes, and they run away with all hi s
brains. They say, when he was a little boy, he made an abs-
t r act 0 f 11Hop 0 I my ThuIIIb11, and he has bee n ma kin gab s t r act s
ever since 11 (6). In brief, Dorothea's marriage was a mad
illusion. And as things stand, she finds no consequent doc-
trine of human life. No satisfying action is possible for
is
her. Here i"ndeed, a disappointment with much of the digni-
ty of tragedy. From her ideal, she falls back on the year-
nings of common women, the need to bless one being, and to
receive the love of one heart: Saint Theresa becomes the
wife of Will Ladislaw. It strikes us as an oddity in Eliot '
s sche~
that she should have chosen just Will Ladislaw as
the creature in whom Dorothea was to find her spiritual com-
pensations. Our dissatisfaction with him is provoked in
great measure by his insubstantial character. He lacks sharp-
ness of outline. We are unable to believe in him as we be-
lieve in Dorothea, in Lydgate, and in Mr Casaubon. It is
true that Will is meant to be a light creature though with
a large capacity for gravity (for :he finally gets into Par-
liament). But still, despite some charming and eloquent tou-
ches here and there from the author, Will remains vague and

---

43
impalpable to the end. He is definitely not the ideal foil
to Mr Casaubon, which Dorothea's soul must have imperious-
,I
ly demanded. And if the author of the key to all Mytholo-
gies' sinned by lack of ardour, neither has Ladislaw the
concentrated fe our essential in the man chosen by so noble
a heroine. The
imppression once given that he is a dilettan-
te is never properly removed. There is something of a poet-
ic
justice for near-sighted Dorothea who marries a dilet-
tante. It is perhaps her retribution for having once admi-
red a false God.
Doubtless we are less content with Ladislaw on
account of the solid presence of Lydgate, the real hero of
the story. Indeed the central theme receives a second illus-
tration in Middlemaheh : Lydgate, who has received a true
vocation, and whose intellectual passion predestines him
to fame in the world of scientific research. But his ambi-
. tion is destroyed by an enemy in the shape of a womam with
1
11 swan - 1 i ken e c k 11 1 per f e c t 1Y t urn e d
s h0 u1de r s 11, 11 eye s 0 f he a -
venly bl ue ? ,
"ha i » of infantile f a t r ne s s ? , in short an an-
gelic nymph, yet who hides behind this mask a soul both hard
and sordid. George Eliot, with a hand tender and yet unfal-
tering, has traced the dull decay of ardour in a spirit fra-
med for the pursuit of great ends. The scientific fibre of
the London physician who has obtained an excellent practice,
and written
a Treatise on Gout, is murdered by a woman
Rosamond, indeed, is his basil plant, which flowrishes

---

44
admirably on the murdered man's brains. The most succ~ssful
passages in the novel are perhaps those painful fireside
scenes between Lydgate and his miserable little wife. The
author's rare psychological penetration is lavished upon
this veritably mulish domestic flower. The impressiveness
and (as regards to Lydgate) the pathos of these scenes is
deepened by the low key in which they are pitched. It is
a tragedy based on unpaid butcher's bills, and the urgent
need for stringent economy. The author has meant to be stric-
tly realistic and to adhere to the lot of the common people.
She has given us in Lydgate and Rosamond, a powerful repre-
sentation of that typical human drama; i.e. the struggle of
an ambitious soul with sordid disappointments and vulgar
embarrassments.
Both Lydgate and Dorothea are frustrated in their
vocation by a combination of milieu and individual failings
- in Lydgate's case
his II s pot s of commonness ll , in Dorothea '
s he r " too theoretical na t ur e ? • Subordinate characters, li-
ke Fred, are made happy in Eliot's novels. Only those with
superior natures suffer. Dorothea's wide charity finds no
direct expression. Lydgate's scientific interest
in public
health meets only blank incomprehension and effective re-
sistance, not only from all ranks in the medical hierarchy
but from almost every element in the town. But if such cha-
racters as Lydgate and Dorothea prospered, there would be
no story. El iot -insists that such characters should suffer,

---

45
and above all, in marriage. Retribution is the constant the-
me and motive of Eliot's art. The retribution here is a vi-
sitation upon matrimonial blindness or folly. Dorothea 's
folly is to choose Casaubon and her retribution is to fore-
see from that moment the slow march to tra.gic .disappoint-
ment : liNo one would ever know what she thought of a wed-
ding journey to Rome" (8). The case is worse with Lydgate
who wishes to become a second Bichat. It is worse, because
his vicious wife outlives him; whereas Mr Casaubon dies
and
makes room for Ladislaw.
Modern Theresas are central figures in Eliot's
novels. Although she has them suffer under retribution, we
sense that she cannot seriously blame someone who wants to
do right but is unable to find a satisfactory method of
doing it. Maggie Tulliver in"The M~ll on the Flo~~ is ano-
ther Saint Theresa. She "wa nted some explanation of this
hard, real life
Some key that would enable her to un-
derstand 11 (9). But despite her gooddisposition, her excess
of affection and her strong need to be loved continually
lead her into blunders and misfortunes. This happens mainly
because she is surrounded by narrow - minded, uncomprehen-
sive people - a typical social conteset for a Saint Theresa.
At the close of the story, Maggie gets her brother's forgi-
veness which is vital to her. We doubt however if she rea-
ches any high understanding, let alone, that she would ex-
ploit it, since she gets drowned soon after her reconcilia-

---

46
tion with her brother.
Whet her her name i s Do rot he a. r·, a ggi e, 0 r Ly dgat e _
and wherever the fault lies, our Theresas, we must admit
have some difficulW in fully manifesting their goodness.
Frustration and disappointment are their lot. From these
-one might ~ather that George Eliot draws a perverse plea-
sure from presentinq such elevated natures bein~ victimi-
zed, even martyred. But we must realise that if inferior
natures escape the difficulties, it is precisely because
they have inferior minds. For there are problems which are
perceptible only to some consciences. And to be fully sen-
sitive to the deepest searchings of heart,soul and intellect
is to possess a high claim on our respect.
2
- Struggle to Wisdom -
George Eliot's ironic presentation of characters
vainly in search of wisdom is balanced by the presentation
of frivolous and ignorant characters eventually coming to
some understanding as by accident. Before they can attain
wisdom, those characters have to struggle, to undergo mul-
tiple changes throughout
the novel. And Eliot patiently
masterly,
drifts us along the meanders of their petty
souls, until we issue on a larger, straighter kind of stream.
Gwendolen
is another victim of folly in marriage

---

47
but her motive is less noble than that of Dorothea. Gwendo-
len is a spoiled child who, in her fear of the loneliness
and vastness of the universe over which she can e~ert no
influence, makes a selfish plunge against all her instincts
of right and purity, into a marriage in which she fancies
she can get her own way. But she has riveted on herself the
grasp of a evil nature which she cannot influence at all,
but who, on the contrary, soon becomes a source of fear and
an object of hate. Gwendolen1s pride and later humbleness,
her agony of helpless hatred for her husband, are drawn with
bitter strength. At times, the author seems to wish to leave
the impression that Gwendolen deserves her lot. But then,
she does not deserve it. Her sin is to be handsome and to
know it. She is young and rather hard, sprightly and rather
domineering. We feel somehow that she could have made a
better match with the aristocratic boa-constrictor, Grand-
court. But at all costs, Gwendolen's dorment moral nature
must be awakened.
She is almost as much tormented by her lay confes-
sor, her spiritual guide, Deronda, as by her tyrannical hus-
band, Grandcourt. To Deronda, she reveals how a sudden,pa-
ralysing
impulse had kept her from throwing a rope to her
drowning husband. Deronda half reassures her by observing
that Grandcourt might have sunk anyhow with a cramp, and
then, he practically
intimates Gwendolen to treat herself
all the same as a murderess in heart and intention, and to

---

48
flagellate her soul, which she duly does, and her life is
broken for a time.
It is important here to note one of the" main fea-
tures in George Eliot'slldramatis persona 11 : it is the pre-
sence of a character endowed with innate wisdom. He is not
to be contrasted to} or paralleled with, the other characters.
His part is to be an exemplar and a guide. So is Deronda,
as suggests the kind of relationship between himself and Gwen-
dolen. We can observe in the course of the story, a disposal
of events which always brings Gwendolen within reach of De-
ronda's influence when she most needs it. Innately, Deronda
has a pure sympathetic nature; his freedom from egoism is
a possession which has come to him without a struggle. De-
ronda is free from all taint of personal ambition and the
sorrow of anticipated failure
like such characters as Lyd-
gate. To Deronda the ideal of manhood in its fullness of
power and beauty, the ideally perfect lot is assigned. He,
even as a child, is sensible to the existence of independent
centres of self outside himself, and can transfer his own
consciousness into them. He is thus predestined to be a sa-
viour and redeemer, the most precious of man1s spiritual
possessions. The main forces which operate in Va~iet Ve~o~da
are sympathies, aspirations, ardours, and the ideas associa-
ted with these. Deronda is roused from his meditative numb-
ness, his diffused mass of feeling is rendered definite, and
is impelled in a given direction. His days become an ordered

---

49
sequence bound together by love and duty; his life is made
one with the life of humanity. The central conception of
Vaniel Ve~onda is religion, or, at least, George Eliot's
conception of religion - that which fills all ,her writings-
the religion of humanity. For to George Eliot, as expressed
through Daniel Deronda's mission, the religious life is
that which transcends self, and which is lived in submission
to the duties imposed upon us by the past, the chains of
those who surround us in the present, and those who shall
succeed us in time to come. To be the centre of the multi-
tude, ,the heart of their hearts, the brain from which all
thoughts take
form - that is the best and purest joy which
a human being can know.
But in characters like Daniel Deronda who are
thoroughly perfect, it becomes difficult to determine the
precise outline of their personality. Grandcourt, who is
the absolute of egoism, is recognized to be human. But De-
ronda, sensitive at every point with life which flows into
and from him in beneficient energy, is a pallid shadow ra-
ther than a man
Anyway
whatever the blemishes of Daniel Deronda
no one can deny that the history of Gwendolen1s moral col-
lapse and regeneration is traced with a great insight and
mastery. Nothing is more convincing in Eliot's study of
characters as relationships, than the relation between

---

50
Gwendolen and Deronda. The dialogue between Gwendolen and
Deronda in the last
Book is Eliot's miniature masterpiece.
It would be hardly possible to exceed the pathos of the par-
ting interview, when Gwendolen suddenly realizes that Deron-
da is not only engaged to another woman, but is
also a~ut· to
leave for the East, to absorb himself in a life in which she
has no interest or concern. Poor Gwendolen is utterly shat-
tered. The relationship between the two is of a sutle
na-
ture. Their relations exclude passion. There is a delicacy
in the painting both of her forlorn sinking of the heart
and of his natural tenderness for her. The new soul born
in within Gwendolen through remorse and penitential sorrow
is sustained in its clinging infantile weakness by someone
strong and tender,a living man, who is to her the best, the
most real, the most worshipful of all things known. That
man becomes her external conscience, while her inner cons-
cience is still able to do no more than open wondering eyes,
half dazzled by the light, after its long, dark, and withe-
ring imprisonment in the airless cell of egoism. And when
good has firmly gained the victory in her, only then is the
sublime, enlightening presence of Deronda withdrawn, to
make room for a more spiritual, independant guidance.
With some reserve, Dinah Morris can be paralleled
with Daniel Deronda if it were not for the ironic light
which Eliot constantly throws upon her. She is a preacher
and the effect of her preaching, at one moment in the book,

---

51
is to make Bessy Cranage repent in terror, but this does
not last. As soon as Dinah leaves the district, Bessy re-
verts to her former ways. And Deronda who assures us he is
not a priest, has an encroaching influence upon Gwendolen.
Deronda and Dinah Morris have certainly not taken form in
the same mould, but the main ingredients they'are made of
are of the same nature. There is in Dinah Morris the young
Methodist a close agreement between her distinguished natu-
ral disposition and the action of her religious faith.
Ine-
vitably, she is bound to be taxed as a tendency from Eliot '
s part to idealize her. But frankly speaking, if by nature
Dinah had been passionate, rebellious, selfish, one would
better va l ue her self-abnegation. One
would look upon it
as the genuine fruit of a profound religious experience. But
as she stands, heart and soul going smoothly hand in hand,
it is clear that her religious conversion is the mere inten-
sification and consecration of pre-existing inclinations.
It would have been more striking if this conversion had been
a total change in
Dinah's moral dispositions, so that her
new life
could have been the more sincere as the old one
had less in common with it. But then George Eliot's drama-
'tis persona~ would have ~een incomplete without a character
naturally, permanently enlightened. So that the blind is to
be acted by someone else, for there must be a blind who even-
tually sees after many an ordeal. That is to be Adam Bede.
He is not aperfet blind but he duly plays his part. We might
object to Adam Bede's unability to be tempted as a blot to

---

52
his f u11 rea 1i z a t ion a s a hum an be i ng.
Yet, we fee 1 1e s sun e a -
sy about Adam than about Dinah; this for the reason that
he develops more as the book progresses. He undergoes a pro-
cess common to many of George Eliot's Characters, a kind of
education through suffering by which he is brought to reali-
ze that his initially-held rules and moral categories are
too rigid and are inadequate to the complex
facts of expe-
rience which successively confront him. This process, of
course, culminates in his disillusionment over Hetty, but
it has started much earlier in the novel with his father's
death; thus at the funera 1, with compunction, he thinks
IIAh! I was always too hard . . . It's a so re fault in me as
I I m so hot and out a l patience with people when they do
wrong, and my heart gets shut up against em, so as I can't
bring myself to forgive'em.
I see clear enough there's more
pr i den 0 r 10 ve i n my sou 1, for I co u1d soon e r ma ke a t h0 u...
sand strokes with th ' hammer for my father than bring my-
self to say a kind word to him ... It seems to me now, if
I was to find Father at home to-night, I should behave dif-
ferent; but there's no knowing perhaps nothing'ud be a lesson
to us if it didn't come too l a t e " (10).
The tone of this passage is appropriate both to
Adam's moralizing nature in general, and to the solemn occa-
sion in particular while its redevance to the main issues
of the book, particularly to the Arthur-Hetty relationship,
is obvious. But Dinah being what she is cannot participate
in this kind of process. The fact that she was born, or

---

53
created, wise makes her essentially static. But the t'urn
her story takes at the end of the novel causes same discon-
fort: when she marries Adam. There is certainly nothing
wrong with the marriage itself; but we are taken unawares,
precisely because Dinah does not develop, but simply changes
in the last book; and George Eliot cannot gloss over that
psychological discontinuity. The latent conflict between a
religious vocation and a desire for marriage is completely
played down, almost suppressed, and this results to an air
of contrivance which mars the last Book. Deronda marries but
this was an expected sequence of events.
However, all these are details. But in this part
of the work concerned with George Eliot's characters strug-
gling for wisdom, the most important thing to retain is that
these are the real exemplars. Eliot1s outlook being essen-
tially didactic, we must recognize that the Adams and the
Gwendolens, because they are not perfect, because they are
weak, are the most striking and efficient exemples of a
better human life possible. No one can be blamed for being
weak, provided he endeavours to better himself.
3
- The Los tOnes
-
We have seen how some of George Eliot1s protago-
nists are endowed with innate wisdom, while some others be-
come wise through struggle. But in George Eliot's universe,
it is the same as in real life: it is not to all characters

---

54
that it is given to reach that elevated moral stage.
Against those who earnestly search and do not find
it, are set those who have no concern whatsoever
with wis-
dom. Hetty Sorrel is their representative. Not only does
she make no attempt towards wisdom, but even after many an
ordeal, after many an opportunity to reform, she remains
unchanged. Of all George Eliot's female figures, Hetty is
"
the least ambitious and on the whole, the most successful.
A lesser artist would have made this trifling country girl
develop into a heroine. But Hetty's conduct throughout is
thoroughly consistant. The part of the story which concerns
her is much the most moving, and touching; and there is so-
mething infinitely tragic in the reader's sense of the con-
trast between the sternly prosaic life of the good people
about her, their wholesome decency and their noonday probity
and the dusky path through the woods along which poor Hetty
is tripping, lightfooted, to her ruin. The author has esca-
ped the facile error of representing Hetty as in any degree
made serious by suffering. She is vain and superficial by
nature; and so she remains to the end.
4·
- Conclusion -
George Eliot's heroines are all of an excellent
quality. An indefinable moral elevation is the general sign
of Eliot's admirable creatures, and in the representation of

---

55
this quality in its superior degrees the author seems to have
remained unsurpassed. To render the expression of the soul,
whether it belongs to a man, or to a woman, requires a deep
insight of mankind and a cunning hand. Through her protago-
nists, George Eliot most effectively presen~ her favourite
themes and finely conveys
her moral outlook.

---

Notes oU'The protagonists'
1.
Middlemarch ch 6 P.
42
2.
Ibid, ch 3 P.
46
3.
Ibid, ch 8 P.
94
4.
Ibid, ch 8 P.
94
5.
Ibid, ch 8 P.
96
6.
Ibid, ch 8 p.
96
7.
Ibid, ch 12 P.I39
8.
Ibid, ch 28 P.
310
9. The Mill ou tho Floss V,
3, P.
301
10. Adam Bede ch 18 P. 198

---

56
C H APT E R
11
==================
SCENIC PRESENTATION
===================
a) - INCIDENT -
Incidents are used as a persuasive technique. They
explain and justify the different turnings of action and
,
lend verisimilitude to the course of events.
The incidents, naturally are as distinctive as
the characters. In George' EliQt's novels, there are no
adventures, almost no scenes of violence, no picaresque
episodes or isolated romances. The substance of the book
lies in the slowly ripening, intermittent, half-unconscious
things like disillusion, the search for insight, growing af-
fection, reformation, or above all, temptation. It is neces-
sary here to distinguish incidents from situations, for eve-
ry memorable phase of a novel is not necessarily a striking
event. It may equally well be a deadlock where nothing hap-
pens or can happen. This is to say that the course of events
impresses the reader sometimes by moving on, and sometimes
by not moving on; an impasse may be peculiarly important,
since it may lead to discussions between characters in which
the author can transmit her vision to her reader with great
immediacy and power. But scenes usually present occasions

---

57
on which characters deliver themselves of utter aphorisms.
And what the characters contribute is thus closely linked
with what the incidents of the story contribute to the sto-
ry. In short, incidents are the pillars of, and prepare the
reader for the scene, which offers, as we will see, many
I
possibilities to George Eliot's rendering of contrasts, con-
flicts and decisions. It is in scenes such as these that the
story takes a decisive turn.
The main function of incident is to give to the
reader, an impression of reality; to build up a natural pro-
cess. If we are not convinced that eve~ts move slowly and
steal upon us unawares, there is Lydgate 's courtship of
Rosamond in which the author subtly points out that "in
the meanwhile the hours were leaving their little deposit
and gradually forming the final reason for inattion, name-
1y t hat act ion \\'I as too 1ate 11 (1); e1sewher e we hCl. ve the slow
accumulation of his debts; or the gradual seduction of Het-
ty by Arthur. And, as the narrative constantly stresses,
what has happened is irrevocable. But often, despite the
character's will, not withstanding his intervention even,
the course of events remains unalterable. Tragic, ironical
twists of Fate then play a large part in the stories.Mrs
Tulliver tries to persuade her husband to come to a recon-
ciliation with Mrs Glegg, and tries to-persuade Wakem not
to buy up their mill. Each time, she causes precisely what
she hopes to avoid. Arthur Donnithorne tries to confess his

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58
love affair to Mr Irwine, and then he changes his mind.An
incident. Philip Wakem is ill. An incident_And Lucy Dean
decides to go shopping.Just another incident. But these
happen on the last day that Maggie and Stephen have to re-
sist their attraction for each other. It is obvious that
this is a genuine ironical twist of Fate, and not a mere
coincidence. Finally there are innumerable incidents that
suggest a continuity between human life and the rest of na-
ture. Let us take one example of this from
~iddlema4eh
Lydgate nearly eludes Rosamond, but "a chance turn of events
caught him at the eleventh hour". Eliot comments: "That
moment of naturalness was the crystallizing feather-touch:
it shook flirtation into love" (2).
But the main point of incident is naturally moral.
George Eliot's device of using incident as an example of
what constitutes good or bad conduct is well-known. In
Vaniel Ve40nda , Gwendolen tells Deronda that she has seen,
in her recent sad experiences specimens of the kind of con-
duct she must avoid - seen them as if shown her for her
instruction by an angel. Still, in Vaniel Ve4onda,
Klesmer
the famous musician, has agreed to consider Mirah's singing
abilities
"I shall be very grateful", said r~irah,calmby
"He wants to hear me sing, before he can judge whether
I ought to be helped".

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59
Deronda was struck with her plain sense about the-
se matters of practical concern (3). And, clearly enough,
the reader is meant to be struck as well. We have another
incident in which, it is clear, George Eliot is not magni-
fying Gwendolen's conduct. It is a dialogue between herself
and her mother.
IIPray go to church, mama ll , said Gwendolen.
III prefer seeing Herr Klessner alone ll •
IIThat is hardly correct, I think ll said Mrs Davilow,
anxiously.
1I0 ur affairs are too serious for· us to think of such
nonsensical r ul e s !", said Gwendolen, contemptuously.
IIThey are insulting as well as ridiculous ll •
IIYou would not mind Isabel sitting, with you? She
would be reading in a corner ll •
liNo, she could not: she would bite her nails and sto-
re. It would be irritating. Trust my judgment, mama.
I must be alone ll •
Gwendolen had her way, of course ... (4).
But sometimes, George Eliot gives the events she
narrates a more interesting and deeper moral significance.
When this is so, what happens is not a model for us to adopt
or reject
but an event in a situation, or a situation in
itself - an impasse, say - that lays bare the fundamental
issues in all conduct of any significance, and illuminates
those essential and unchanging factors present in any moral
choice.

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60
b) - SETTING -
While the main point of incident is, as me have
seen, moral, the scenic background can do much to enrich
our understanding or modify our feelings about the way of
the world. It also has in its way, a contribution to Eliot'
s persuasive technique.
There is no denying that the suggestiveness of ac-
tion and incident is enriched by setting them in a careful-
lyevocatively
described scene. Scenery, when Well descri-
bed, stirs our emotions and invests the description with a
moral significance. George Eliot's treatment of scenery re-
veals her conviction that in many ways, scenery reveals the
course of nature; and that scenery is something that readi-
ly creates the very emotions and attitudes she wishes to
create.
Let us now make a closer consideration of the use
she makes of scenery in her novels.
Indeed, a description of nature can be moving.
But it also can be more than that. The scene in which Adam
and Seth find their father drowned in the brook is more
than a mere description. It is a presentation of a careful
fusion of peasant custom and superstition, of country sce-
nery and the event itself, all combined so that it seems both

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61
probable and significant. Adams has been working alone all
night long on a coffin his father had promised for the fol-
lowing day, but had neglected because of his unability to
resist having a drink. So he had reesolved to go out. First
we see Adam and Seth cheerfully carrying the coffin away
very early next day:red sunlight, flowery lanes and fields~
singing birds, lithe fresh youth of the summer morning ...
peace and loveliness, the stalwart strength of two brothers
in their rusty working, clothes, and the long coffin on
their shoulders" - lilt was a strangely mingled picture"(5)
But Seth soon changes our view of the image:
"But see what clouds have gathered since we set
out.
Il m thinking we shall have more rain. It'll be a
sore time for th':haymaking if the meadows are flooded
a ga in. The br 00 k I S fin e and full now : a not her day I s
rain'ud cover the plank, and we should have to go
round by the road 11 (6).
At that instant, they find their father's body
floating in the current, wedged by a willow tree. It was
11
a smart rap, as if with a willow - wand 11 (7) that Adam
had fancied he heard against the door, as he worked on into
the previous night; we saw him then, caught up in the an-
cient rustic superstition, and wondering if the odd sound
vi as
rea 11 y a omen
The sce ne r y i s not si mply tom a ke the
incident vivid, but to reflect and elucidate its "mingled ll

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62
youth and age, gaiety and tragedy, beauty and drabness.
The total
effect is a way of controlling what the reader
experiences, over a wide front, in such a way as to convey
in
the author's outlook on lifeVthe one event. Sometimes Eliot
achieves this through the setting alone:
"I like to go and work by a road thatlll take
me up a bit of a hill'
(Adam says), and see the fields
for miles round me . . . or a town, or a bit of a stee-
ple here and there. It makes you feel the world1s a
big place, and there's other men working on it ...
besides yourself.
His brother Seth, the Methodist agrees
"I like th'hills best, when the clouds are over
your head and you see the sun shining ever so far off
... It seems to me as if that was heaven where there's
always joy and sunshine, though this life's dark and
cl 0 udy 11 ( 8) .
The conversation here makes the technique expli-
cit and reveals particularly that scenes evoke emotions not
in vacuo but through their factual detail. Here, we have
the cosmic picture in the description of Fred and Rosamond
riding to Stone Court IIthrough a pretty bit of midland land-
scape ... meadows and pastures ... Little details gave each

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63
field a particular physiognomy, dear to the eyes that ha-
ve looked on them from childhood: the pool
... the great
oak ... the huddled
roofs and fences of the homestead with-
out a traceable way of approach. The grey gate' and fences
against the depth of the bordening wood; and the stray ho-
vel, its old thatch full of mossy hills and valleys ...
these are the things that make the gamut of joy in lands-
cape to middleland-bred souls" (9). The ride itself has
almost become incidental
: the description is of central
importance and its aim is to make us understand the system
of nature, and therefore love it more perhaps.
To finish my remarks on incident and scenery in
relation to scene
, I will only recall
that they are
the main ingredients which give George Eliot's stories, a
natural colour through their qualities of persuasion.
What now remains is the use George Eliot makes
of scenes in her novels. The scene is another important
literary device manipulated
by George Eliot'so that it
should suit her artistic purposes. Indeed the scene offers,
as we said earlier, an opportunity to give a natural but
crucial twist to the story; here the character seems to be
more responsible than the author. Secondly, a careful posi-
tioning of the scene in the novel can be very effective.

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64
I - CRISIS AND DECISION -
George Eliot manages through incident and scene-
ry-to give an impression of inevitability which is not ri-
gid, neither is it artificial.
Her characters make a moral tradition for them-
selves, and their deeds determine them, but since the cha-
racters are morally "iridiscent" there is a certain stage
when the determination is held in suspense. She needs a
strong suggestion of plausible alternatives at these moral
crossroads where redemption and damnation are equally like-
ly. The most obvious examples are Maggie Tulliver, Will
Ladislaw, Gwendolen, and Arthur Donnithorne.
Maggie's vision of possibility is conveyed in
the imagery of the river: its enchantement, its power,
its isolation, its languor. She yields to Stephen's song
and is "borne by a wave too strong for he r !", then "by the
Tide". It is with sharp perceptiveness that George El iot
portrays the moral chaos that takes possession of Maggie's
mind. Instead of waltzing, Stephen walks with Maggie into
the conservatory, gazing at her, but silent. liThe hovering
thought that they must and would renounce each other made
this moment of
mute confession more intense in its raptu-
re 11(10). As she reached for a flower, Stephen in " a mad
impulse" kissed her arm. The violence of her resentment is

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65
a sign of the depth of her passion for him; for soon she
felt a twinge of remorse not from the offence made to her
person, but from the II sin of allowing a moment's happiness
that was treachery to Lucy, to Philipp - to her own better
s oul " (12). The
next
day, Philip's company comforts her
with a deceptive feeling that IIher better soul ll has regai-
ned its mastery. Yet, a few days later, in the lane at
Basset, when she could have freed herself at once from Ste-
phen's importunity by saying ll that her whole heart was Phi-
lip's, her lips would not utter that, and she was silent ll
(13). We can see her, alone in her room, making the stron-
gest resolutions, but when Stephen appears the violence
of her desire so overwhelms her that she cannot see her
conduct in perspective at all. She lives only in the pre-
sent, and in the present she is conscious only of being
happy and must at all costs prolong her happiness. And
that tendency unconsciously determines her choice. In put-
ting "p t ty and faithfulness and memo ry " before love, she
can only - illogically - beg Step hen to IIhelp me, because
I love YOI.lII ... (14). Maggie was compromised by her own di-
vided nature. Stephen's sincere letter (of which only two
paragraphs are quoted), is quite moving; it was the Iltone
of mi s e r y" in it that made the balance tremble during t·1ag-
gie's "J a s t co nf l t c t ? • When Stephen said, "Cal l me back to
life and goodness! write me one word -: say 11 come! 11 • In two
day s Ish 0 U 1d be wit h you! 11 (1 5), t~ a ggi est art ed fro m her
seat to reach for pen and paper. But she did not write. It
was her worst temptation; and when it was over she burned

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66
Stephen's letter. There is only one main guiding principle
which justifies Maggie's decisions and that is the past.
It is for her a period of happiness and security. She de-
cid est 0 1e a ve Phi 1i P be c a use 11 I des i re n0 f ut ure t hat will
break the ties of the pastil (16). And she rejects
Stephen
at Mudport because to marry him would II r e nd me away from
all t hat my pas t 1i f e has made de a ran d h01 y tom e 11 (17).
She also refuses to leave St Ogg's after the scandal be-
cause she would be II c ut off from the pastil. And in her last
temptation victory was won by IImemories that no passion
could long quench: the long past came back to her, and
with it the fountains of self-renouncing pity and affection
of fai~Dfulness and r e s ol ve " (18).
When Gwendolen waits for Grandcourt's offer of
marriage, we know well
that she has already made up her
mind to refuse. But we also know that in fact, she is expe-
riencing a genuine, strong moment of indecision. Before and
after Gwendolen's choice, George Eliot closely tracks Gwen-
dolen's vacillating thought, and she hints once or tv/ice
that Gwendolen's earlier decision is weakening. The tension
begins in the chapter-motto of chapter 26, which takes on
an ironical resonance when we move to the next chapter. It
runs :
He brings white asses laden with the freight of Ty-
riam vessels, purple, gold, and balm, to bribe my will:

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67
. I'll bid them chase him forth Nor let him breathe
the taint of his surmise
on'my secure resolve.
But until Grandcourt gegins to speak, Gwendo1en
's mind is apparently made up. She is going to refuse him.
That vision of possibility is gradually dissipated as
Grandcourt asks her questions she cannot answer, and this
because she is, significantly, beginning to be 1itera1-
minded. She finds it unsafe to give a "yes" or "no" ans'--
wer when he asks if she is "reckless about him". After the
next "Is there any man who stands between us 1" she feels
herself "against a net". This feeling of helplessness is
the turning~point. But then, another possibility springs
up : Grandcourt speaks of riding away, and Gwendo1en is
quite surprised at her own reaction:
Almost to her astonishment, Gwendo1en felt a sud
den alarm at the image of Grandcourt, finally riding away.
What would be left her then 1 ~othing but the former drea-
n
riness. She liked him to be there. She snatched at the sub
ject that would defer any decisive answer
(19).
The de f er.r ed an s we r - the e vas i ve re fer e nc e to
her mother's losses - is the beginning of her capitulation.
She is caught off g~ard quite unawares, and she has to re-
consider her earlier decision. In fact, at this stage, wi-
thin herself, she has decided ... to accept him. This is

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68
a scene that manages to convince by its immediacy that this
is indecision, lithe alternative dip of counterbalancing
thoughts
begotten of counterbalancing desires". In Geor-
ge Eliot's moral universe, Gwendolen has to commit herself
and choose.
A similar option must be present whenever a novelist
succeeds in dramatizing the tension of conflict and choice.
Lydgate and Ladislaw, at one stage in M~ddtema~eh
are held in moral suspense, and it is then that they come
for the first time into a formally emphatic relation. Lyd-
gate is offered two possibilities: stay in Middlemarch
and hope for redemption; or leave Middlemarch and acknowled-
ge his defeat-which is Rosamond's victory. Ladislaw for his
part, though with less strength, is also torn between staying
and going. His departure is brought into direct relation
with Lydgate's.
When Lydgate spoke with desperate resignation of
going to settle in London, and said with a faint smile,
I
we shall have you again, old fellow', "Iill felt inex-
pressibly Mournful, and said nothing. Rosamond had that
morning entreated him to urge this step on Lydgate;
and it seemed to him as if he were beholding in a ma-
gic panorama a future where he himself was sliding in-
to that pleasureless yielding to the small solicita-

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69
tions of circumstance, which is a comm6ner histo'ry of per-
dition than any single momentous bargain.
We are on a perilous margin when we begin to loo~
passively at our future selves, and see our own figures lee
with dull consent
into insipid misdoing and shably achie-
vement. Poor Lydgate was inwardly gieaning on that margin,
and Wili was arriving at it (20).
Here we see, the possibilities coincide. But Lyd-
gate's courageous decision will turn out to be a failure.
The crisis gives Will's character a measure of realistic
sol i di ty whi ch c oun t e r e a c t s the g~a.mol1r and innocence wi th
which the imagery surrounds him.
Fate is seen as fragile, success as variable. The
rigid moral process is there, but'so is the precariousness
of chance.
There is also a striking example which shows,-as
is the case with Maggie in The M~ll on ~he Flobb- that de-
cisions for George Eliot's characters are seldom fu11y de-
liberate, but she does present scenes where, even with the
failure) or} in some cases avoidance of consciousness, crucial
J
decisions are in effect made.
It is t~e scene which presents
Ly dgat e 15 en gag em e nt toR 0 s am0 nd. The 11dec i s ion 11 i s not pr e -
meditated, yet George Eliot renders successfully the psy-

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70
chological process in each character: we have Lydgate co-
vering his embarrassment by speaking "almost formally",
Rosamond unable to conceal her distress, and its effect
on Lydgate. As a result: "That moment of naturalness was
the crystallizing feather-touch: it shook flirtation into
love 11 (21). The drama of such a scene is not conveyed in
actions as on the stage, or even in certains scenes in
Adam Bede
or the Mill on the Flo~~; we are given here on-
ly one line of direct speech. Description and comment main-
ly convey the scene, yet at the same time, it does achieve
a peculiar kind of concreteness and immediacy.
The last example of crisis and decision, we will
draw from the remaining of the four
books: Adam Bede. Ar-
thur Domithorne had several occasions to avoid the circums-
tances which drew him into sexual relations with Hetty Sor- .
rel. He was aware that he should have confessed to Mr Ir-
wine and confide to him his feelings about Hetty. He was
on the verge of doing so. But he chose not to. When George
Eliot's characters come to a point at which they must make
a crucial decision, she does not mean the decision to be a
mere formality, naturally. On the contrary, The balance bet-
ween the two possibilities present must deeply involve the
character so as to create a geniune conflict in his mind.
Maggie was free to avoid getting into the boat
with Stephen. Gwendolen had an apportunity not to marry

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7 1
Grandcourt, and Arthur to confess to Mr Irwine; Had not Lyd-
gat e bee n sow ea k wit h the 11 fa i r 11 sex, he \\'J0 u1d ha ve bee n
able to avoid his burden by not flirting with Rosamond in
the first place. But they all yield to their natural incli-
nations without fully understanding them.
This is how a character, for George Eliot, beco-
mes what he makes himself. And th"ough him the story as a
whole seems to follow a completely natural and logical
course.

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72
11 - SCENE AND TIME SEQUENCE -
All
narratives cre~e some kind of time sche~.
The art of narrative, at its lowest, implies a simple se-
quential interest. But Eliot's moral emphasis adds an im-
portant element of causality to the sequential interest.
As soon as the art of narrative advances beyond a mere tem-
poral sequence, a new kind of interest is set up. The nar-
rative is based on juxtapositions, parallels, contrats, an-
ticipation, and recollection. Typically of G. Eliot too,
we have concurrent stories interweaving within the same
book. Such a method also demands the elaboration of a pat-
tern of interest in which the author's control of time ob-
viously plays an
important part.
We are not concerned, in this study, with George
Eliot's treatment of ttme in general. Our study here is
restricted to the position of the scene in Eliot's novel;
its effect and purpose. George Eliot does not follow the
simple sequential time in which this happens, and then that
because of this or that. In other words, chapter 4 is not
necessarily the logical continuation of Chapter 3 and so on.
What we want to detect here, therefore, is why action in
chapter 6 and chapter 30 are simultaneous while the action
in chapter 10 precedes or follows both; why five consecu-
tive chapters are lodged Vlithin one single hour of time,
and why whole years elapse within a single sentence; why

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73
chapters 8 and 9 are about totally different situations. In
short, we are concerned with the function fulfilled by the
position of a scene within its context and within the book
as a whole.
In The M~tt on the Fto~~, we have two parallel
stories that relate to the same character
Maggie as a
child and Maggie as an adult. Eliot links the two with a
comment: "Life did change for Tom and Maggie, and yet
they were not wrong in believing that the thoughts and
loves of these first years would always make part of their
lives. We could never have loved the earth so well if we
had no c hi l dho od in it " (22). The unity of the book is
reinforced by the frequent anticipation of Maggie's trage-
dy through Mrs Tulliver who at one point says: "Ah!, I
thought so - wanderin'up ani. down by the water like a wild
thing: she'll tumble in some
day" (23), and at another.
to 1 i t t 1e I·' a 99i e : "Wher e 1 s t he use 0 I my t ell i n9 you to
keep away from the water? you'll tumble in and be drowned
some day, ani then you'll be sorry you didn't do as mother
told you" (24).
The recollection of Maggie's childhood further
establishes the unity of the book: "I desire no future that
will break the ties of the past ",
she would do nothing
t hat \\'10 U 1d " re nd me
away fro m all t hat my pas t 1i f e has
made dear and holy to me", and in her last temptation, she

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74
was overcome by IImemories that no passion could long quench:
the long past came back to her". Unity is ensured not only
by anticipation and recollection - we also have it in the
person of the adult Maggie in whom we still find the child
. To clarify this idea we can draw a parallel between two
crucial scenes:
Perhaps the suspense did heighten Maggie's enjoy-
ment when the fairy time began; for the first time,
she quite forgot that she had a load on her mind - that
Tom was angry with her; and by the time IIHush, ye pretty
warbling choir" had been played, her face wore that bright
look of happiness, while she sat immovable with her hands
clasped ... But when the magdc music ceased~she jumped up,
and running towards Tom, put her arm round his neck and
said: 1I0h, Tom, isn't it pretty 1" (25).
and
Stephen rolled out with saucy energy
Shall I, wasting in despair,
Die because a woman's fair 1
and seemed to make all the air in the room alive with a
new influence ... and Maggie, in spite of her resistance
to the spirit of the song and to the singer, was taken ho1
of and shaken by the invisible influence was borne along
by a wave too strong for her (26).
and by now, we are made quite familiar with the meaning
of the last image.

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75
In Adam Bede, there is one main story, that of
Adam and Hetty, involving other characters, namely Arthur
Donnithorne and Dinah Morris, the young methodist. And
because Eliot's emphasis is always on the moral aspect,
in her description of Hetty and Dinah, we can almost say
that she exhausts all her narrative possibilities to make
a clear distinction between the two separately
or toge-
ther. The parallels and contrats between these two charac-
ters are enforced in a number of ways, sometimes indirect-
ly, sometimes fairly obviously, and sometimes quite expli-
citly.
T~e juxtaposition of chapters 7 and chapter 8
which are simultaneous points out the first obvious con-
trast between Hetty and Dinah. In chapter 7, we are pre-
sented Hetty in Arthur's presence the general atmosphere
is worldly. Hetty is coquette and Arthur is not exactly
indifferent to Hetty's beauty. With the author's 'you shall
hear now what (Irwine a~d Dinah) had been saying to each
H
other (while we were with Hetty and Arthur), we pass on to
chapter 8 which presents Dinah and Irwine in highly spiri-
tual conversation. Eliot generally chooses to set both Di-
nah and Hetty into action at the same moment but always in
different settings or spheres, so as to .set forth a clearer
contrast between the nature of their activities being main-
ly concerned with their thoughts. We have an example in
the way they respectively spend their time from Wednesday

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76
afternoon to thursday evening inclusive. The news of the
death of Thias Bede will allow Eliot to " pl ac e" Dinah and
Hetty in contrasting lights. Dinah's reaction to the death
of Adam's and Seth's father is sincere: "Ah, their poor
mother aged mother! 11 said Dinah, dropping her hands and
looking before her with pitying eyes, as if she saw the
object of her sympathy ... III must go and see If I
can
give her any he l p" (27). Then 1I0h, how dr e e dru l l " said
Hetty, looking serious, but not deeply affected; and as
Mally now entered with the dockleaves, she took them silen-
tly and returned to the dairy without asking further ques-
t i ons " (28)
(ch.8). So ends Ch. 8. And chapter 9 begins:
While she adjusted the broad leaves ... I am
afraid Hetty was thinking a great deal more of the
looks Captain Dannithorne had cast at her than of
Adam and his troubles.
Two thirds of the chapter are taken up with the
description of her selfish dreams. Eliot concludes: IIIn
this state of mind, how could Hetty give any feeling to
Adam's troubles, or think much about poor old Thias being
drowned? Young souls, in such pleasant delirium as hers
are as unsympathetic as butterflies sipping ne c t a r , they
are isolated from all appeals by a bar-rier of dreams - by
invisible looks and impalpable arms. At exactly the same
instant (Ch.lO), we see Dinah being sympathetic, soothing
Lisbeth and conforting her sons, Adam and Seth.

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77
The following day, thursday, Dinah spends in the
Bedes ' cottage, actively preparing the meals
and cleaning
the house. We learn that she is to get back to the Hall
Farm in the evening (Ch.ll). The chapters 12 and 13 relate
Hetty's timetable on that very thursday which as we know,
Dinah spends in the cottage. The morning sun of Thursday
darts on Arthur's conflicting thoughts: to give up Hetty
or-to yield to the devise to see her again. We know the
decision when we find him on Hetty' s way to Mrs Pomfret '
s (Ch.12) and this ~arks the first step of Hetty's down-
fall.
In chapter 13, Arthur is found waiting for her again
on her way back to the Hal'l' Farm. They commit themselves
with a kiss."
Hetty1s and Dinah's return home coincide in chap-
ter 14, it is an occasion for both to be fused into a con-
trast, first physical and then moral: lilt made a strane
contrast to see that sparkling self-engrossed loveliness
looked at by Dinah's calm pitying f a c e " (29). Dinah's remark
to Hetty is unconsciously ironical as she observes :
IIYou look very happy to-night, dear c hi l d ? , she
said ... she paused a moment, but Hetty said nothing.
lilt has been a very precious time to me", Dinah went,
11 1 a s t
ni g htan d to - day - see i ng tw 0 S Uc h g00 d son sas
Adam and Seth Bede. They are so tender and thoughtful
for thei r aged mother" (30).

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78
And then we think of the nature of Hetty's happiness ...
As all this seems rather confusing, we shall resor.t to a
diagram for an attempt to clarification.
Chapter
Time
Day
Event
7 )
{ Wordly picture of Hetty
)
Afternoon
Wednesday
{ and Arthur
8 )
{ Spiritual scene with
•
{ Irwine and Dinah
9 )
{ Hetty set up in her sel-
)
Late af- ,.
Wednesday
{ fish,fauciful world.
)
ternoon
{
10 )
{ Dinah sympathizing
11
Morning
Thursday
Dinah preparing breakfast
and cleaning the house at
the Bede's.She will stay
there till evening.
I
12
Afternoon
Hetty and Arthur meet in
the wood on her way to
Mrs Pomfret's (Dinah still
in the cottage).
13
Evening
Arthur and Hetty commit
themselves (Dinah probably
about to lea\\le the cottage)
14
Night
Dinah and Hetty meet on
their mays home.

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79
In "the two bedchambers" (ch.15), Eliot draws an ex-
plicit contrasting parallel between the two girls:
Hetty and Dinah both slept in the second story
in rooms adjoining each other, meagrely furnished
rooms, with no blinds to shut out the light, which
was now beginning to gather new strength from the ri-
sing of the moon-more than enough strength to enable
Hetty to move about and undress with perfect ccmfort.
She could see quite well the pegs in the old painted
linen - press on which she hung her hat and gown;
she could see the head of every pinon her red cloth
pin-cu~hion; she could see a reflection of herself in
the old-fashioned looking-glass, quite as distinct
as was needful, considering that she had only to brush
her hair and put on her night-cap. A queer old looking
glass! Hetty got into an ill temper with it almost
every time she dressed. It had been considered a hand-
some glass in its day ( ... ). But Hetty objected to it
because it had numerous dim blotches sprinkled over
the mirror, which no rubbing would remove, and because
instead of swinging backwards and forwards, it was
fixed in an upright position, so that she could only
get one good view of her head and neck, and that was
to be had only by sitting down on a low chair before
her dressing-table at all, but a small old chest of
drawers, the most awkward thing in the world to sit

---

BD
down before, for the big brass handles quite hurt
her knees, and she couldn't get near the glass at
all comfortably. But devout worshippers never allow
incoveniences to prevent them from performing their
religious rites, and Hetty this evening was more bent
on her peculiar form of worship than usual.
Having taken off her gown and white kerchief,
she drew a key from the large pocket that hung outsi-
de her petticoat and, unlocking one of the lower dra-
wers in the chest, reached from it two short bits of
wax
candle - secretly bought at Treddle~on
- and
stuck them in the two brass sockets. Then she drew
forth a bundle of matches and lighted the candles;
and last of all, a small red-framed shilling looking-
glass, without blotches. It was into this small glass
that she chose to look first after seating herself.
She looked into it, smiling and turning her head on
one side, for a minute, then laid it down and took
out her brush and comb from an upper drawer . She was
going to let down her hair, and make herself look li-
ke that picture of a lady in Miss Lydia Donnithorne's
dressing-room. It was soon done, and the dark hyacin-
thine curves fell on her neck. It was not heavy, mas-
sive, merely rippling hair, but soft and silken; at
every opportunity into delicate rings. But she pushed
it all backward to look like the picture, and form a

---

61
dark curtain, into relief her round white neck. Then
she put down her brush and comb and looked at herself
folding her arms before her, still like the picture ...
Oh yes! She was very pretty. Captain Donnithorne thou-
ght so. Prettier than anybody about Hayslope - pret-
tier than any of the ladies she had ever seen visiting
at the Chase - and prettier than Miss Bacon, the mil-
ler's daughter, who was called the beauty of Freddles-
ton ...
But Hetty seemed to have made up her mind that
something was wanting, for she got up and reached an
old black lace scarf out of the linen - press, and a
pair of large ear-rings out .of the sacred drawer from
which she had taken her candles. It was an old scarf
full of rents~ b~
it would make a becoming border
round her shoulders, and set off the whiteness of her
upper arm. And she would take out the little ear-rings
she had in her ears - and put in those large ones.
They were but coloured glass and gilding, but if you
didn't know what they were made of, they looked just
as well as what the ladies wore. And so she sat down
again, with the large ear-rings in her ears, and the
black lace scarf adjusted round her shoulders. She
looked down at her arms: no arms could be prettier
down to a little way below the elbow - they were white
and plump, and dimpled to match her checks; but towards
the wrist, she thought with vexation that they were

---

62
coarsened by
butter - making and other work that
ladies never did ...
No eyelashes could be more beautiful than Hetty
's; and now, while she walks with her pigeonlike sta-
teliness along the room and looks down on her shoul-
ders bordered by the old black lace, the dark fringe
shows to perfection on her pink cheek ...
Hetty stood sufficiently in
awe
of her aunt
to be anxious to conceal from her so much of her vani-
ty as could be hidden without too great sacrifice.
She could not resist spending her money on bits of
finery which Mrs Poyser disapproved; but she would ha-
ve been ready to die with shame, vexation, and fright
if her aunt had this moment opened the door, and seen
her with her bib of candle lighted, and strutting
about decked in her scarf and ear-rings. To prevent
such a surprise, she always bolted her door, and she
had not forgotten
to do so to-night. It was well
for there now came a light tap, and Hetty,with a lea-
ping heart, rushed to blowout the candles and throw
them into the drawer. She dared not stay to take
out her ear-rings, but she threw off her scarf, and
let it fall on the floor, before the light tap came
again. We shall know how it was that the light tap
came, if we leave Hetty for a short time and (come)
to Oinah, ... to her bedroom, adjoining
Hetty's.

---

B3
Dinah'
delighted in her bedroom window. Being
on the second story of that tall house, it gave her
a wide view over the fields. The thickness of the wall
formed a broad step about a yard below the window,
where she could place her chair. And now the first
thing she did on entering her room was to seat
her-
self in this chair and look out on the peaceful fields
beyond which the large moon was rising, just above the
hedgerow elms. She liked the pasture best where the
milch cows were lying, and next to that the meadow
where the grass was half-mown, and lay in silvered
sweeping lines. Her heart was very full, for there
was to be only one more night on which she would look
out on those fields for a long time to come; but she
thought little of leavring the mere scene, for, to her,
bleak snowfield had just as many charms. She thought
of the dear
people whom she had learned to care for
among these peaceful fields, and who would now have a
place in her loving remembrance for ever. She thought
of the struggles and the weariness that might lie be-
fore them in the rest of their life's journey, when
she would be away from them, and know nothing of what
was befalling them; and the pressure of this thought
soon became too strong for her to enjoy the unrespon-
ding stillness of the moonlit fieJds. She closed her
eyes, that she might feel more intensely the presence
. of a love and sympathy deeper and more tender than was

---

84
breathed from the earth and sky. That was often Dinah '
s mode of praying in solitude. Simply to close her
eyes and to feel
herself enclosed by the Divine Pre-
sence; then gradually her fears, her yearning anxie-
ties for others, melted away like ice - crystals in a
warm ocean. She had sat in this way perfectly still,
with her hands crossed on her lap and the pale light
resting on her calm face, for at least ten minutes,when
she was startled by a loud sound, apparently of some-
thing falling in Hetty's room. But like all sounds
that fall on our ears in a state of abstraction, it
had no distinct character ... She rose and listened
but all was quiet afterwards,and she reflected that
Hetty might merely have knocked something down in get-
ting into bed. She began slowly to undress; but now,
owing to the suggestions of this sound, her thoughts
became concentrated on Hetty
This blank in Hetty'
s nature, instead of exciting
Dinah's dislike, only tou-
ched her with a deeper pity. By the time Dinah had
undressed and put on her nightgown, this feeling about
Hetty had gathered a painful intensity; her im~gina­
tion had created a thorny thicket of sin and sorrow,
in which she saw the poor thing struggling torn and
bleeding, looking with tears for rescue and finding
none. She felt a deep longing to·go now and pour into
Hetty's ear all the words of tender warning and appeal
that rushed into her mind ... Still she hesitated;

---

85
she was not quite certain of a divine direction ... Oi-
nah was not satisfied without a more unmistakable gui-
dance than those inward voices. There was light enough
for, if she opened the Bible, to discern the text suf-
ficiently to know what it would say to her. She knew
the physio~nomy of every page, and could tell on
what
book she opened, sometimes on what chapter, without s~~
eing title or number.
It was a small thick Bible, worn
quite round at the edges. Oinah laid it sideways on the
window
edge, where the light was strongest, and then
opened it with her forefinger ... she had opened on that
memorable parting at Ephesus, when Paul had left bound
to open "his heart in a last exhortation and warning. She
hesitated no longer, but, opening her own door gently,
went and tapped on Hetty's ... What a strange contrast
the two figures made, visible enough in that mingled
twilight and moonlight! Hetty, her cheeks flushed and
her eyes glistening from her imaginary drama, her beau-
tiful neck, and arms bare, her hair hanging in a curly
tangle down her back, and the banbles in her ears. Oi-
nah, covered with her long white dress, her pale face
full of subdued emotion, almost like a lovely corpse
into which the soul has returned charged with sublimer
secrets and a sublimer love. They were nearly of the
same height; Oinah evidently a little the taller as
she put her arm round Hetty's waist and kissed her
forehead ...

---

B6
"De ar
Het ty"!
she said, lilt has been borne in upon
my mind to-night that you may some day be in trouble-
trouble is appointed for us all
here below, and there
comes a time when we need more comfort and help than
the things of this life can give.
I want to tell you
that if ever you are in trouble, and need a friend that
will always feel
for you and love you, you have got
that friend in Dinah Morris ... Will you remenber it,
Hetty ? "Ye s " said Hetty, rather frightened.
IIBut why
should you think I shall be in trouble? Do you kow
of anything ?II
11 • • •
There is no man or woman born "into this world
to whom.some of these trials do not fall, and so I feel
that some of them must happen to you; and I desire for
you, that while you are young you should seek for stren-
gth from your Heavenly father, that you may have a sup-
port which wi l l not fail you in the evil day " ...
... Do n t t talk to me so, Dinah. Hhy do you come to
frighten me ? I ·ve never done anything to you. Why
can't you let me be ?II
Poor Dinah felt a pang. She was tou wise to persist ...
She went out of the room almost as quietly and quickly
as if she had been a ghost; but once by the side of
her own bed, she trew herself on her knees and poured
out in deep silence all the passionate pity that filled
her heart.
As for Hetty, she was soon in the wood again - her wak-
ing dreams being merged in a sleeping life scarcely
more fragmentary and confused (31).

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87
This scene may be slightly lengthy but it was ne-
cessary to quote it. First of all because it is a rich pas-
sage - symbols, metaphors, images -; secondly, because we
could not possibly comment on, and analyse it in the abs-
tract. Thus, the immediate juxtaposition of the two scenes
presenting the two girls in isolation is the culminating
point of their dissimilarity. We first have Hetty performing
her ritual of self-worship as she parades in her cheap fine-
ry before the blotched mirror, and then we turn to the adja-
cent room where Dinah sits before her window and thinks of
the natural scene, then of individuals, then of God, turning
finally to particular concern and sympathy for Hetty.which
is given direct expression in her attempt to communicate
with her. The significance of the contrasting actions is
clear, and made clearer be George Eliot's comments and analy-
ses, but it is also placed in a context established by com-
mentary which has already formulated the contrast in chapter
14 : lilt was a strange contrast to see (Hetty's) sparkling
self-engrossed loveliness looked at by Dinah's calm pitying
fa c e, wit hit s 0 pen g1an c e whi c h told t hat her he art 1 i ve d
in no cherished secrets of its own, but in feelings which
it longed to share wi t h all the world". Our understanding
the significance of this double scene does mostly depend
on the way it presents itself with that juxtaposition; and
on its position within the book as a whole, for we can ob-
serve here that the juxtaposition of this chapter with its
immediate successor enforces another parallel: Dinah, at

---

BB
this point, is to Hetty what Irwine is to Arthur. This in-
terlocking of parallels which creates the narrative pattern
is intimately related to the effect of interconnected but
everwidening perspectives. In this network of connections
between the two girls, time is important. For example Dinah
leaves the Bede's cottage, returning from her errand of mer-
cy (14), at exactly the same time as Hetty parts from Arthur
on the first stage of her downfall
(ch.13}, as we have al-
ready observed. Hetty's good angel Dinah leaves for
now-
field (ch.11) at about the same time as her bad angel Ar-
t hur 1e a ve s for Ea g1ed ale
(ch.16). It is in November that
Adam becomes engaged to Hetty; it is in the following Novem-
ber that he marries Dinah. Dinah leaves Snowfield for Leeds
on the same day as Het ty, pretending to visit her at Snow-
field,sets out to find Arthur at ~Jindsor. And many more . . .
One of the main emotional effects of this kind of pattern
is clearly that of i ro ny ; the reader perceives what the cha-
racters do not, precisely because he is i n the position to
make connections. He has a panoramic view of the whole fra-
mework. But this wider knowledge throws a sombre, ironical
light on the action of the novel. The must interesting exam-
ple of this is in that section which is least straightfor
-
ward in its chronology, Book V. As we read this part, we en-
counter first Adam vainly searching for Hetty,(who is vainly
searching for Arthur), we hear of her arrest and witness her
trial.
It is only through the evidence given at the trial
and through Hetty's subsequent confession to Dinah that we

---

89
learn what happened to Hetty after her return from Windsor.
Meanwhile Arthur having apprised the Old Squire's death,
has been journeying homewards, pleasantly anticipating the
future and little knowing what the future holds in store
for him. Apart from the irony directed on Arthur, one other
ironical stroke of fate emerges with appalling clarity from
the disordered chronology; in Ch. 39, Adam not knowing of
Hetty's crime and arrest, tells Irwine : "You was tlha l
married me and Hetty Sorrel, you know, sir, o'the 15th 0 1
t his m0 nt h". The 15t h 0 f Marc his, i n fa c t, the da t e
fix e d
for Hetty's execution. Adam spends the preceding night with
Bartle ~lassey :
Sometimes he would burst out into vehement speech:
IIIf I could ha'done anything to save her - if my bea-
ring anything would ha'done good ... but t'have to sit
still, and know it, and do nothing ... itls hard for
a man to bear ... and to think o'wath might ha'been
now; if it hadn't been for him ... 0 God, it's the very
day we should ha'been ma r r t e d " (32).
No other way could be more emphatic. What I wish
to stress, is the submerged parallels and the unemphatic iro-
nies. Once a9ain, we will resort to a diagram to outline
the action of the novel at the one point where the technique
of straight-forward narration is complicated.

---

90
I
i
Chapter
I
Time I
Day
Da te
Event
I
43
Evening Sunday
27 Feb.
Hetty sleeps at Stoniton on her
night
way back from Wi nds or , Ababy i s
born durin9 the night.
(Sarah
Stone's evidence).
38
r~orning Sunday
28 feb.
Adam goes to Snowfield in search
of Hetty.
43
8.30
Sunday
28 feb.
Hetty 1ea ves the lodging with
p . m.
her baby.
38
evening Sunday
28 Feb.
Adam returns to Oakbourne.
38
11
monday
1 march
Adam goes to Stoniton to search
a. m.
for Hetty.
43
1
p. m.
monday
1 march
John Olding sees Het ty ; hears the
baby crying.
43
2
P. m.
monday
1 march
Olding finds the dead baby. He
and the constable search for
Hetty.
38
Night
~10nday
1 march
Adam sees the coachman who drove
Hetty to Stoniton on the 12 fe-
bruary.
43
~lor-
ni ng
Tuesday 2 march
Hetty is arrested
38
Mo r-
ning
Tuesday 2 march
Adam searches for Hetty at Sto -
niton; gives up and starts to
go home.
,

---

91
Reshuffling the events in this way reveals what
the arrangements of the narrative conceals, reveals for
example how nearly the paths of Adam and Hetty cross, how
nearly he saves her from her fate, since on Monday, march
1st, when Hetty abandons her child just outside Stoniton,
Adam comes to Stoniton from Oakbourne in search of her.
Brought to light in this way the facts pose an interesting
problem with regards to the author's choices. And to be
franck, we can assume that an ordinary, non-analytical rea-
ding of the novel does not make the reader aware of these
facts, which, we can also assume with confidence, George
Eliot was very well aware of. The unique detail and preci-
sion of time and the careful construction of the narrative
must force us to that conclusion.
I would like to stress that Adam Bede differs
from the rest of George Eliot's fiction only in degree, not
in kind. None of the other novels exhibits the same asto-
nishing chronological detail
but all of them are equally
rewarding when subjected to the kind of analysis attempted
here. In Adam Bede , juxtapositions and parallels abound
because there is only one main strand of story. So the au-
thor is more at ease to juxtapose and parallel and contrast
ad libitum with the most effective result as much for the
local meaning as for the main issue. But in Mlddlema~eh,
where we deal with so many concurrent stories, surely that
method would have been obtrusive, if not confusing. At any

---

92
rate, Middlema~~h surpasses all of George Eliot's novels in
the matter of interweaving different stories. There are four
main stories to dispute the first place in order of impor-
tance. The title of the Book is not delusive indeed, for we
are practically presented the whole community of Middlemarch
through the leading characters, who are strategically pla-
ced in Middlemarch, geographically speaking. So there is hum-
drum Middlemarch . This interweaving of concurrent stories
is characteristic of later George Eliot. Each story is stre-
tched through the whole novel and is intermittently dealt
with; and we have actions infinitely interacting, for, ob-
viously the stories are not dealt with in isolation, but
they rather constitute, what has been so justly labelled
the web; George Eliot's web; From that web we will snatch
two threads in the shapes of Lydgate and Dorothea. Some-
where else in this study, we, analysed these two in relation
but it was from a different aspect and for a different pur-
pose. Our problem here is to know how they come to be rela-
ted, how they come to stand as clear, obvious parallels,
and why don't we think of drawing a parallel between Doro-
thea Brooke and Fred Vincy for example? We can already re-
mark that the parallel does not emerge II na t ur a l l y ll from ana-
logous situations experienced by both, for these are not
obvious at the first perusal to the common reader. Yet, when
we get to make the first relationship between the two, then
we become more and more aware of the author's ingenious but
insistent invitation on that path; then we notice that she

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93
always presents one in relation to the other in a very quiet
though often clumsy.way. Thus their emotional lives are pre-
sented parallely. In chapter 11 (Lydgate is introduced in
chapter lOt to Dorothea and to the reader)t we are told that
Lydgate "had been Miss Vincy above his horizon almost as
long as it had taken Mr Casanbon to become engaged and mar-
ried" to Dorothea. Then in the same chapter - following Lyd-
gate1s introduction - we are told that chapter 5 - long be-
fore Lydgate's introduction - and chapter 11 are simultane-
ous. Eliot thus gains time by presenting the stage of Lyd-
gate - Rosamond relation at the time Dorothea is preparing
for her wedding (Ch.5):
Rosamond silently wished that her father would
invite Mr. Lydgate .... But she would not have chosen
to mention her wish to her father ... An alderman about
to be mayor must by-and-by enlarge his dinner-parties t
but at present there were plenty of guests at his well-
spread table.
That table often remained covered with
the re-
lics of the family breakfast long after Hr Vincy had gone
with his second son to the warehouse ... This was the case
one morning of the October in which we have lately seen Mr
Casanbon visiting the Grange; and though the room wns a
little overheated with the fipe t which had sent the spanie
panting, to a remote corner, Rosamond for some reasont con·

---

tinued to sit at her embroidery longer than usual, now ana
then giving herself a little shake, and laying her work on
her knee ...
(33).
But for Eliot who always orientates the relation-
ship of her characters in view of a moral prospect, this
kind of parallel so thinly restricted to time, is much too
abstract and sterile. So she creates a tangent which would
draw the two characters into closer relationship; a tangent
which naturally stretches through the book. This tangent is
to be the object of our study, because it enables Eliot to
control the parallel formed by Lydgate and Dorothea. Now
let us see-how it works. It will be necessary, before any-
thing, to identify the tangent: it manifests itself in the
shape of Lydgate's evaluation of women.
We first have Eliot's hint and anticipatory re-
mark that
Miss Brooke was not Mr Lydgate's style of woman any more
than Mr. Chicheley' s. Considered indeed, in relation
to the latter whose mind was matured, she was altogether
a mistake, and calculated to shock his trust in final
causes, including the adaptation of fine young women to
purple-faced bachelors. But Lydgate was less ripe, and
might possibly have experience before him which would
modify his opinion as to the most excellent features
in woma n" (34).

---

95
,
I
Alea jacta est. Our main concern from this moment
on is to see whether or not Lydgate will alter his judgement;
why, and how. Then Eliot, states the fact in chapter 11
thatlLydgate, in fact, was already conscious of being fasci-
nated by a woman strikingly different from Miss Brooke l.
And knowing what we know of Miss Brooke so far regarding
her physical qualities and moral dispositions, we tend to
remain sceptic as to Lydgate1s choice.
Then we have the first stage of Lydgate1s recon-
sideration of his judgment, or at this stage, he is at least
stricken by Dorothea1s devotion to her sick husband - and
this incident occurs before Lydgate1s own marriage - and
Eliot anticipates Lydgate1s memories:
For years after Lydgate rembered the impression
produced in him by this involuntary appeal - this cry
from soul to soul, without other consciousness than
their moving with kindred natures in the same embroi-
led medium, the same troublous fitfully - illuminated
life (35).
Lydgate eventually marries that woman so "strikin-
gly different from Miss Brooke"
Miss Rosamond Vincy. This
could cause but a catastrophe. In his matrimonial unhappiness
he gradually changes his criteria of a good woman. Thus in
chapter 58, Lydgate compares Rosamond with the two extreme

---

96
representatives of women in his know~edge
Rosamond did not look at her husband, but present-
ly rose and took her place before the tea-tray. She
was thinking that she had never seen him so disagreea-
ble. Lydgate turned his dark eyes on her and watched
her as. she delicately handled the tea-service ... For
the moment he lost the sense of his wound in a sudden
speculation about this new form of feminine impassibi-
lity revealing itself in the sylph-like frame which
he had once interpreted as the sign of a ready intel-
ligent sensitiveness. His mind glancing back to Laure
while he looked at Rosamond, he said inwardly, 'would
she kill me because I wearied her? 11 and then lIit is
the way with all wo ma n!". But this power of generali-
zing which gives men so much the superiority in mista-
ke over the dumb anim~ls, was immediately thwarted by
Lydgate's memory of wondering impressions from the be-
haviour of another woman - from Dorothea's looks and
tones of emotion about her husband when Lydgate began
to attend him - from her passionate cry to be taught
what would best comfort that man for whose sake it see-
med as if she must quell every impulse in her except
the yearnings of faithfulness and compassion. These re-
vived impressions succeeded each other quickly and
dreamily in Lydgate's mind while the tea was being
brewed. He had shut his eyes in the last instant of

---

97
reverie while he heard Dorothea saying, "Advise me -
think what I can do - he has been all
his life labo~­
ring and looking forward. He minds about nothing else-
and I mind about nothing else '.
That voice of deep-souled womanhood had remained
within him as the enkindling conceptions of dead and
sceptr~d genius had remained
within him (is there not
a genius for feeling nobly which also reigns over hu-
man spirits and their conclusions?)
: The tones were a
music from which he was falling away- he had really fal-
len into a momentary doze, when Rosamond said in her
silvery neutral way, here is your tea, Tertius, setting
it on the small table by his side, and then moved back
to her place without looking at him (36).
It is only after he has recognized the true values
in a woman that he is made to benefit from the virtues of
a woman endowed with them, namely Dorothea who brings him
material and moral comfort at the moment he needs them most.
And Eliot comments
It was the first assurance of belief in him that
had fallen on Lydgate's ears. He drew a deep breath,
and said "t ha nk you". He could say no more
it was
something very new and strange in. his life that these
few words of trust from a woman should be so much to
him (37).

---

98
And we have the miraculous effect of trust and understanding
in Lydgate's confession to Dorothea that:
You have made a great difference in my courage by
believing in me. Everything seems more bearable since
I have talked to you (38).
Note that these last scenes appear in chapter 76,
that is
the close of the book. George Eliot has ca-
1 t o w a r d s
refully inserted these scenes in the massive Middlemanch;
and we can see here that in spite of their interacting with
other stories, they can still be placed in time and space
with perfe~t integrity. I particularly want to draw atten-
tion on the gradual narrowing of the parallel. In the last
stage of Lydgate and Dorothea's relationship, the parallel
literally fuses into one line. The interest of this tangent
in
Eliot's handling of scene and time is that it offers a
multitude of possibilities. First of all, it contributes to
the unity of the book ... Secondly, it lends a measure of
flexibility to Eliot's swerve from one scene to another,
from a one character to another. And thirdly it permits an
effortless control on the parallels.
Naturally we find in Middlemanch in the other de-
vices used in the other books. There are contrasts, not ne-
cessarily between characters, as we have seen in Adam Bede;
because here we mostly deal with ideas, one single character

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99
can be the object of many contrasts. We have for instance
a bitter contrast between Dorothea IS expectations in her
marriage and what the reality comes to.
We have Lydgate's scientific ambitions
turn into self-destruction. We have the juxtaposition of
chapter 20 and chapter 21. In chapter 20, Dorothea and Ca-
sanbon become fully aware of the disparities between them
both. In chapter 21, Will Ladislaw and Dorothea find in one
another, corresponding qualities. And so on.
In Vaniel Ve~onda, we have not only the characte-
ristic interweaving of different narrative strands but also
a complicated temporal pattern which begins in a dramatic
present and then makes a series of excursions into the past
lives of Gwendolen and Deronda, always returning to the same
present. Obviously such a pattern is a fruitful
source of
temporal contrasts and parallels. An interesting one is
that which occurs if we compare chapter 10 with chapter 17.
Gwendolen meets Grandcourt at about the same time (july)
as Deronda saves Minah from committing suicide. The interac-
ting destinies of these two share the same starting - point
in time; this cannot be coincidence. The tangent here is
formulated in Eliotls own words in chapter 36 : 11 the coer-
cion is often stronger on the one who takes the reverence.
Those who trust us educate us. And then perhaps in that ideal
consecration of Gwendolenls some education was being prepa-
red for Deronda ll • Thern their relationship is defined, and

---

, 00
their destinies is traced in miniature. But the parallel
here works the other way round: it spreads apart towards
the end. I would like to isolate the chapters 37 and 38
because to my mind they appear to be the best example of
George Eliotls effective juxtaposition of scenes. They are
not real scenes in the proper sense of the term but they
present two different minds in action. Both are considered
in isolation. I dare say we have two halves of one soul des-
perately looking one for the other, and the juxtaposition
of the two chapters enables us to anticipate the match. Let
us rather leave it to George Eliot. These are the end of
chapter 37 and the beginning of Chapter 38. Not to miss the
way the two chapters are connected
inter alia:
Perhaps the ferment was all the stronger in Deron-
dais mind because he had never had a confident in whom
he could open himself ... He had always been leaned on
instead of being invited to lean. Sometimes he had lon-
ged for the sort of friend to whom he might possibly
unfold his experience: a young man like himself who
sustained a private grief and was not too confident
about his own career; speculative enough to understand
every moral difficulty, yet socially susceptible, as
he himself was, and having every outward sign of equa-
lity either in bodily or spiritual wrestling; - for
he had found it impossible to reciprocate confidence
with one who looked up to him. But he had no expecta-

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101
tion of meeting the friend he imagined. Deronda's was
not one of those quiveringly- poised natures that lend
themselves to second-sight.
And chapter 38 begins
"Se co nd Sf qh t " is a flag over disputed qr ou nd . But it
e
is metter of knowledge that there are persons whose
yearnings, conceptions-way, travelled conclusions -
continually take the form of images which have a fore-
shadowing power: the deed they would do starts up be-
fore them in complete shape, making a coercive type;
the event they hunger for or dread rises into vision
with a seed-like growth, feeding itself fast on unnum-
bered impressions. They are not always the less capa-
ble of the argumentative process, nor less same than
the commonplace calculators of the markets: sometimes
it may be that their natures have mainfold openings, li-
ke the hundred-gated Thebes, where there may naturally
be a greater and more miscellaneous inrush than through
a narrow beadle - watched portal. No doubt there are
abject specimens of the visionary, as there is a mini-
me mammal which you might imprison in the finger of your
glove. That small relative of the elephant has no harm
in him;
but what great mental or social type is free
from specimens whose insignificance is both ugly and
noxious? One is afraid to think of "that the genus

---

102
II pa t r i o t ll
embraces; or of the elbowing there Plight be
at the day of judgement for those who ranked as authors,
and brought volumes either in their hands or on trucks.
This apology for inevitable kinship is meant to
usher in some facts about Mordecai, whise figure had bit-
ten itself into Deronda's mind as a new question which
he felt an interest in getting answered. But the interest
was no more than a vaguely expectant suspense: the con-
sumptive-looking Jew, apparently a fervid student of so-
me kind, getting his crust bya quiet handicraft, like
I
Spina, fitted into none of Deronda's anticipations.
It was otherwi~with the effect of their meeting
on Mordecai. For many winters while he had been conscious
of an ebbing physical life, and a widening spiritual lo-
neliness, all
his passionate desire had concentrated it-
self in the yearning for some young ear into which he
could pour his mind
as a testament, some soul kindred
enough to accept the spiritual product of his own brief,
painful lite, as a mission to be executed. It was remar-
kable that the hopefulness which is often the beneficient
illusion of consumptive patients, was in Mordecai wholly
diverted from the prospect of bodily recovery and carried
into the current of this yearing for transmission. The
yearning, which had panted upward from out of overwhel-
ming discouragements, had grown into a hope - the hope
• l·

---

103
into a confident belief, which, instead of being checked
by the clear conception he had of his hastening declirle
took rather the intensity of expectant faith in a pro-
phecy which has only brief space to get fulfilled in.
Some years had now gone since he had first begun
to measure men with a keen glance, searching for a pos-
sibility which became more and more a distant conception.
Such distinctness as it had at· first was reached chief-
ly by a method of contrast: he wanted to find a man who
differed from himself. Tracing reasons in that self for
the rebuffs he had met with and the hindrances that beset
him, he imagined a man who would have all the elements
necessary for sympathy with him, but in an embodiment un-
like his own: he must be a jew, intellectually cultured
morally fervid - in all this a nature ready to be pleni-
shed from Mordecai's ; but his face and frame must be
beautiful and strong, he must have been used to all the
refinements of social life, his voice must flow with a
full and easy current, his circumstances be free from
sordid nee~ : he must glorify the possibilities of the
Jew, not sit and wander as Mordecai did, hearing the
stamp of his people amid the signs of poverty and waning
breath.
The main interest of this extract undoubcedly
lies in the juxtaposition of the two chapters. But at
the same time, the richness of the passage in contrast
and parallels and imagery cannot pass on unnoticed.

---

1 04
Many more examples could be cited~ but these~ I
think ~ should suffice to show that George Eliot's setting
of the scene - if I may so express myself - in time and spa-
ce within the framework of the novel
is never gratuitous.
The first scene may appear irrelevant until we find its echo
in the very last scene of the book. The juxtaposition of the
scenes in Chapter 8. and chapter 9 might seen uncongruous~
but look closer! And why is it that the scenes in chapter 3
and chapter 40 are simul taneous? Well ~ just start the book
again and read chapter 40 straight after chapter 3~ and tell
us how you enjoy
it that way. Then if you are honest~ you
will
inevitably admit all what you miss by re-making the book.
in
For you do re-make itVchanging the initial s e q ue nc e , that on
which lies
Eliot's all me r i t , for Eliot's control of
the whole novel is temporal; the relationship of part to
whole is governed by its sequential position so that what
the story means is largely determined by the way in which it
unfolds in time. And as a matter of fact~ she practically
scatters fragments of events throughout the novel in order
to achieve both richness and clarification~ and she succeeds.
After all "Why should a story not to be told in the most ir-
regular fashion that an author's idiosyncrasy may prompt/pro-
vided that he gives us what we enjoy? 11 (39)~ Ye s , why not?
Take it from Eliot.

---

Notes ou 'Scenic Presentation'
I.
Middlernarch ch 12 P. 146
2.
Ibid,
ch 31 P.
335
3. Daniel Deronda ch 37 P.
524
4.
Ibid,
ch 23 P.
293
5. Adarn Bede ch 4 P.
60
6 .
Ibid,
ch 4 P.61
7.
Ibid, ch 4 P. 58
8.
Ibid, ch 11 P. 123
9. Middlernarch ch 12 P.
130
10. Tho Mill on Tho Floss
Book VI ch 10 P.
462
11.
Ibid, VI, 10, P.
463
12.
Ibid, VI, 10, P. 463
13. Ibid, VI,II,
P.
470
14.
Ibid, VI, 11, P.
471
15.
Ibid, VII,5, P.
538
16.
Ibid, VI,
10, P.465
17.
Ibid, VI,
14, P.502
18.
Ibid, VII, 5 , P.539
19. Daniel Deronda ch 27 P.
346
20. Middlernarch ch 79 P. 840
21.
Ibid op cit. cf note 2
22. Tho Mill I, 5,P. 48
23.
Ibid,
I,2,P.
17
24.
Ibid,
I,2,P. 18
25.
Ibid,
I,9,P.P.
103-104
26.
Ibid, VI,7 P.
437

---

27. Adam Bede, ch 8 P.98
28.
Ibid, eh8 P.IOI
29.
Ibid, ch 14 P. 142
30.
Ibid, ch 14 P. 143
3I.
Ibid, ch 15 P.P. 149-159
32.
Ibid,
ch 46 P.
434
33. Middlemareh ch ii P. 124
34.
Ibid, ch 10 P. 120
35. Ibid, ch 30 p. 324
36.
Ibid, ch 58 P. 638
37.
Ibid, ch 76 p.
819
38. Ibid, ch 76 P. 825
39. Miriam Allot, Novelists ou the Novel : 'Narrative Technique'
(Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd, London 1965) P.264.

---

105
C H APT E R I l l
===================
H1AGERY
=======
I - DEFINITION -
According to S.H. Burton in lithe Criticism of Pro-
sell, "{maqe r y basically is a verbal appeal
to the reader's
sense perceptions. Whenever a writer uses words that awaken
in the reader's memory or imagination a concept of the senses
of touch, taste, smell, sight, hearing, or movement, he is
using an im~ge . We can, therefore, classify images according
to the sense perception to which they appeal; sight (visual
images); taste (gustatory images); smell
(olfactory images);
touch (thermal or tactile images); movement (kinaesthetic
images)1I . Then he adds that lithe sense perceptions stirred
to life in the reader's memory or imagination by the writer'
s image may themselves symbolise emotions and for ideas. If
this happens, then the function of the image is symbo l t c ? •
Here is a diagram showing the process:
B ---~) !se;;;e-perceptions[ ~fEmotions/ldeasf
For many writers, imagery is a major means of arou-
sing emotions and ideas appropriate to their subject matter
and reinforcing their purposes. They seek to fuse with the

---

106
sense perception element of their images,anemotional"and
intellectual complex hannonious
with their overall aim and
apt to their immediate purpose.
In clearer terms, we may say that where the image
is mainly descriptive its effectiveness is limited to its
sensuous element. Where the image is mainly symbolic its po-
wer resides in the emotional and intellectual complex· that
it transmits via its sensuous element.
Granted these preliminaries, we may now turn to
Eliot's personal approach to this device.
11 - IMAGISTIC PROCESS IN ELIOT'S FICTION -
Eliot's manipulation of imagery is complex, and
intricate. I do not have the pretention, in this study to
detect every single aspect of her technique. I certainly mis-
sed so much, and perhaps the best, All
I can aspire to with
some confidence is the presentation of an oversimplified clas-
sification of he; different approaches to imagery. These are
numerous but I retained three: the vertical, the horizontal
and the concentric.
1°) - Vertical approach -
I labelled "vertical" the approach relating imagery

---

107
to its total linguistic context. If we take the literal mea-
ning as the first level of the scale and the metaphorical as
its summit, we then can expect an ascending and descending
movement.
a) - ~~f~~9i~g_fQ~r~~~Q~~~~:~ : in the
ascending
movement of the image, we go from the purely literal to the
highly metaphorical, that is, we have a literal description
of a fact entailing a metaphorical function.
En example from
The Mill On the FfoM
will cl ar i f Y t his. ~J hen r·1 a gg i e s 1 i ps
as she is getting into the boat with Stephen or when she tells
Tom
III was carried too far in the boat to come back on
Tue s day"
(3), .we may feel
that the extended non-literal sense
of her slipping or her being carried too far is given validi-
ty because these phrases occur in a textural context given
depth.
b) - ~~~f~~gi~g_~Qrr~~e~~q~~~~ : Sometimes Eliot
reverses the process and tranforms what has metaphorically
been expressed into an actual event. This reversal is often
finely exploited for the purpose of anticipatory irony. Thus
in ~9~~_~~q~ , Dinah in the following terms, is thinking about
He t ty :
Her thoughts became concentrated on Hetty - that
sweet young thing, with life and all its trials before
her - the solemn daily duties of the wife and mother -

---

lOB
and her mind so unprepared for them all, bent merely on
little foolish, selfish pleasures, like a child hugging
its toys in the beginning of a long toilsome journey in
which it will have to bear hunger and cold and unshelte-
red darkness (4).
liThe journey of life ll is the kind of platitude that
naturally finds its place in Dinah's meditation; it is in no
way uncongrous here; it is even so commonplace that we hardly
notice it, despite its unusual elaboration. But it is a meta-
ph1rical foreshadowing of the actual journey Hetty will make
to Windsor and back; so. life catches up with the metaphor.
This interplay of literal and metaphorical
is not
necessarily ironical. At the end of chapter 18, we leave Hetty
in a disillusioned state, in a IImoment
of bare, wintry disap-
pointment and doubt '". This clearly contrasts wi t h Adam's me-
taphorical vision of Hetty at the beginning of the next chap-
ter :
lilt was summer morning in his heart and he saw Het-
ty in the sunshine; a sunshine without glare - with slan-
ting rays that tremble between the delicate shadow of
the leaves (5).
In the next chapter, this vision is literally fulfilled

---

109
He could glance at her continually as she bent over
the fruit, while the level evening sunbeams stole through
the thick apple-tree boughs, and rested on her round
cheek and neck as if they too were in love with her(6).
In all these examples we have a close interpeden-
den c e 0 f i mage r y wi t hit s 1 i t era 1 c 0 unt e r par t , The way i n
which such images breed and develop, crossing the boundaries
between mental and physical, imagined and actual, 1 iteral and
metaphorical, is one
Eliot's devise to gioing
depth and rich-
ness to the naturalistic substance of her novels.
2°) - Horizontal Process -
,
I
Because one of her imperatives is~Only Connect,
the interweaving of concurrent stories, the emphasis on cause'
and effect,the placing and relationships of characters,
the social analysis, the operations of the omniscient author)
all these, as well as the use of imagery, reflect George Eliot
's concern with the various processes of life we will call
IIconnectionsll.
The imagery of entanglement is the textural counter-
part of the novel's structure. Its process is horizontal, a
continuum. Eliot traces a virtual line which is the theme,or
life process. On that line, she builds up a chain, the links
of which are stories, incidents, characters, situation, lan-

---

11 0
guage, imagery, in short all the composants of a novel. And
so we have on the first level, all
the different links tied
up to one another, and so "connected". And on the second plan
we have them all following the line. In other terms, they
are all directed towards the same scope. The particular ad-
vantage offered by this horizontal process in terms of ima-
gery is that one strand of language connects with, or crosses,
a not her; sot hat , a t what eve r po i nt we s tar t , we are 1e d, by
intersections and interactions, to perceive the pattern of
the whole.
At least at two points in MiddtenJaJtdL
,George Eliot
uses one of her favourite connective images to express not
just her deepest sense of what life in all
its complications
is like, but also her awareness of the novelist's duty to give
form and significance to the flux and chaos of eXistence;
at the same timeshe acknowledges
that the flux and the
chaos will always remain.
But to avoid being ourselves entangled in our ana-
lysis, it seems advisable to sum ourselves up at this level
and retain so far:
- In the first rlace, that Eliot has a chaotic vision of life
owing to all its complications; then she visualizes life as
an ensnaring thing, because there is no possible independence;
and eventually life is a continuum because it follows its

---

111
inexorable process.
- Secondly, that all this is expressed
in the novels through
images drawing their source from a literal chain or a web.
Their accumulation, which has a hypnotic effect, fills the
novel with a solid sense of connections.
- Third and lastly, that the very structure of the novel can
be - and often is - the utmost expression or representation
of George Eliot1s concept of life process
a continuum at
a large scale, to be distinguished from the continuation of
details, trifles. One example expressing both the image and
the con c e pt whi c h are se mi na 1 0 f a 1 a r ge par t 0 f H.-Ldd!emafLc.h I
s texture is to be found at the beginning of chapter 15 in
which George Eliot has been commenting an Fielding's use of
digressions. She explains:
I at least have so much to do in unravelling cer-
tain human lot, and seing how they were woven and inter-
women, that all the light, I can command,must be concen-
trated on this particular web, and not dispersed. over
that tempting range of relevancies called universe (7).
Again, at the opening of the finale, when justi-
fying her sense of that continuum of time in which her novels
are placed, that sense of an over-arching and enveloping hu-
man context, whi~h must transcend anYone novel, she states:

---

11 2
Every limit is a beginning as well
as an ending.
Who can quit young lives after being long in company
with them, and not desire to know what befell them in
their after-years? For the fragment of a life, however
typical, is not the sample of an even web: promises
may not be kept, and an ardent outset may be followed
by declension; latent powers way find their long-waited
.
opportunity
a past error may urge a grand retrieval
J
( 8 ) .
There are many different kinds of webs in Mlddtema~~h'
He have
-.T hat s t re 't.ch t ngin tot he pas t :
Mentally surrounded with that past again, Bulstrode
had the same pleas-indeed the years had been perpetual-
ly spinning them into intricale thickness, like masses
of spide-web, padding the moral sensibility (9).
- That stretching into the future, and spun by Lydgate and
Ro.samond. Commenting on the courtship of Dorothea and Casan-
bon, Eliot asks: "Has anyone pinched into its pilulous
smallness the cobweb of prematrimonial acquaintanceship ?"
and our answer is : certainly not Lydgate and Rosamond. On
again in chapter 36
11 You ng 10 v e - ma kin g - t hat
go s s amer web
Even the

---

11 3
points it clings to - the things whence its subtle in-
terlacings are swung - are scarcely perceptible; momen-
tary touches of finger - tips, meetings of rays from
blue and dark orbs, unfinished phrases, lightest chan-
ges of cheek and lip, faintest tremors. The web itself
is made of spontaneous beliefs and indefinable joys,
yearnings of one life towards another, visions of com-
pleteness, indefinite trust. And Lydgate fell to spin-
ning that web from his inward self with wonderful rapi-
dity ..
As for Rosamond, she was in the water-lily's
0
expanding wonderment at its own fuller life, and she
too was spinning industriously at the mutual web ll
But the web, as we know turns into somethi~ else
for Rosamond and Lydgate, and as that relationship changes
in quality so· does the imagery expressing it.
Indeed, the web itself is a good metaphor for the
operation of George Eliot's imagery; for as we said earlier
it offers the advantage of connecting one strand of langua-
qe with another so that at whatever point we start we are
led, by intersections and interactions, to perceive the pat-
tern of the whole. And because all the links form the chain,
each in its turn and
in its way spouses the movement of
that chain, but conserves its entity. Thus Bulstrode's web
is not far from the labyrinthine imagery attached to Casanbon;
both are creatures of dark, tortuous paths in which they not

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114
only lose their way but actually seek to loose it, Casaubon
in order to purge himself of the suspicion that all
his
scholarly endeavours are futile Bulstrode in order to free
himself of his guilty past.
Similarly, the web as an ensnaring thing merges
naturally with other images of entanglement and enslaving
relations. Dorothea feels that way when she has to face the
fact that her husband's ambitions may govern her even from
the grave
Neither law nor the world's opinion compelled her
to this ~ only her husband's nature and her own compas-
sion, only the idea and not the real yoke of marriage.
She saw clearly enough the whole situation, yet she
fettered : she could not'smite the stricken soul that
entreated hers (10).
Because the horizontal process is more striking
in M1ddte.mCtfLc.h' than in Eliot's other novels, we wi l l restrict
our examples to that work. Here is a further example of ano-
ther strand of language being connected with the image of
entanglement. There are two crucial scenes in which Fare-
brother warns Lydgate that independence is necessary to his
scientific integrity; he must not get entangled:
IIYou must keep yourself independent. Very few men

---

11 5
can do that. Either you slip out of service altogether
and become good for nothing, or you wear the harness
and dr aw a good deal where your yoke-fellows pull you"
( 11) .
What Lydgate must avoid is Middlemarch intrigue,
getting into debt and binding himself with the wrong kind
of family ties. And of course it is in precisely these three
ways that he entangles himself. Already, by the time of Fa-
rebrother's warning, "Lydgate was feeling the hampering
threadlike pressure of small social conditions, and their
frustrating complexity" (12). At this point of history in
Middlemarch, professionally and personally, he is caught up
in the gossip of Middlemarch; and we know that gossip is an
important factor in the interwoven strands of the novel. Be-
sides, it is given a precise image in the picture of Mrs
Taft
"who was a l way s counting stitches and gathered her in-
formation in misleading fragments caught between the rows
of her knitting "(13). And since Lydgate is only one stitch
in the pattern ofMiddtema~~h, his flirtation with Rosa can-
not remain a private affair:
It was not more possible to find social isolation
in that town than else-where, and two people persistent-
ly flirting could by no means escape from the various
entanglements, weights, blows, clashings, motions, by
which things severally go on (14).

---

116
We have seen how his engagement to Rosamund fits
in this pattern, and the web of love they spin soon turns
into something else under the pressure of married life.
Marriage clo ses upon Lydgate like a trap; he is soon bow-
, -i ng his ne c k unde r the y 0 ke 11 (1 5 ), s 0 0 n a f r aid 0 f sin kin g
lIinto the hideous fettering of domestic hate ll (16). And (li-
ke Fred) he makes momentary and futile attempts to escape:
Under the first galling pressure of foreseen dif-
ficulties, and the first perception that his marriage,
if it were not to be a yoked loneliness, must be a ~ta­
te of effort to go on loving without too much care
about being loved, he had once or twice tried a dose
of opium (17).
But he has to learn to carry his burden the best
he can, to comply with Ro s ano nd ' s "d umb ma s t e r y " and
the hampering, entangling, pressure of the world, concilia-
tion finally with the web.
This kind of language, which is only occasionally
elaborated into over metaphor and which isunobtrus;vely
but insistently expressed in the twistings and turnings of
the life portrayed, reflects perhaps the deepest and most
inclusive
function of George Eliot's imagery.

---

11 7
3°) - The concentric Approach -
It consists in placing a character in an ironic
perspective:
- At the first stage we .
have the pattern of the situa-
tion (legend, symbol).
- At the second, we have the character identifying himself.
It is important here to take the character1s reaction in-
to account because at this stage of identification,the
situation is "a c t ua l " in his mind though t n the story it
;s restricted to verbal actualisation.
- At the first stage, we have the character presented in
the actual situation. And his vision might or not be ful-
filled.
Thus on the whole, we have three apparently inde-
pendent stories but which insert one into the other and so
from the symoblic or idea'], to the actual, via psychological.
One of the rare examples of this is to be found
in :the M.a.fon the Fr.os s .
The process starts when Tom says
IIWhen Il m a man, I shall make a boat with a
wooden house on the top of it, like Noah's ark, and keep

---

11 8
plenty to eat in it - rabbits and things - all ready
And then if the flood came, you know, Bob, I shouldn't
mind ... And lid take you in if I saw you swimming ll(18).
At this stage, we have on the first level Nohah '
s legend, and on the second, Tom's identification to Noah,
and his virtual experience of the situation. And when the
flood actually comes, Bob is already in one boat, while in
the other, Maggie is paddling to Tom's rescue:
IISoon , from the window of the attic in the central
gable she heard Tom's voice, II who is it? Have you brought
a boat '?II
IIYes, Tom; God has taken care of me to bring me to you.
Get in qu i c kl y " (19).
The irony of the outcome has no special importance
here. The main thing is that we have had three different re-
flections of the same situation, we have completed our chi-
nese set: a story within a story within a story.
All these granted, we shall now pass on to George
Eliot's sources of imagery. Our analysis of the use and
functions of imagery will be mad~ in the patterns of the
above techniques.
In this part, we shall deal with the kind
of imagery which is constant in all George Eliot's novels.

---

119
III - ELIOT'S SOURCES OF IMAGERY - ITS USE AND FUNCTION -
1°) - Imagery drawn from Nature -
George Eliot's imagery obviously embodies her con-
ception of the way human beings are rooted in nature. And
since most of her novels take place in rural environnements
it is only natural that her characters should be defined in
those terms.
a) - ~~D_~D_~~t~r~ -
Imagery in George Eliot's
novels has several functions.
In the following instances it
is one means of characterization. Adam sees life in terms of
his trade, Mrs Poyser in terms of the farm-yard, Barthe Mas-
sey in terms of the school-house. But what they have in com-
mon, of course, is imagery drawn from nature. Hayslope is
a rural community, close to the soil, and thus this kind of
imagery derives naturally from the realistic portrayal of
the actual process of life. It is also a kind of language
which the character also shares with the author; and the
language of nature pervades and envelops the whole novel,
underlying the community of man with man; of human animal and
inanimate life, stressing the order and continuity of things
and reinforcing the awfulness of what ;s unnatural.
This language operates in a complex way. The wea-
ther and the landscape are never described for their own

---

1 20
sake inAdam B~d~;
they are always closely linked with hu-
man activities, with sowing, hay-making harvesting. And whi-
le they may be described in non-metaphorical terms they often
fill a function similar to that of metaphor, in that they
image or embody some major theme of the novel. The descrip-
tion of Arthur's birthday provides a good example for this:
Nature seems to make a hot pause just then: all
the loveliest flowers are gone; the sweet time of ear-
ly growth and vague hopes is past; and yet time of har-
vest and ingathering is not come, and we tremble at
the possible storms that may ruin the precious fruit
in the moment of its ripeness (20).
This passage reflects exactly the development of
human relationship in the story. Arthur and Hetty too have
reached this point. This note finds an echo at the beginning
of chapter 27, in a passage which explicitly denies any cru-
de kind of pathetic fallacy but which allows a quasi-meta-
phorical extension of meaning, the statement of themes seem
to be worked out in purely human terms:
"The eighteenth of August was one of these days
when the sunshine looked
brighter in all eyes for the
gloom that went before. Grand masses of cloud were hur-
ried accross the blue, and the great round hills behind
the chose s~emed alive with their flying shadows; the

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121
sun was hidden for a moment, and then shone out warm
again like a recovered joy; the leaves, still green,
were tossed off the hedgerow trees by the wind; around
the farmhouses there was a sound of chapping doors;
the apples fall
in the ochards; and the stray horses
on the green sides of the lanes and on the common had
their manes blown about their faces. And yet the wind
seemed only part of the general gladness because the
sun was shining. A merry day for the children, who ran
and shouted to see if they could top the wind with their
voices; and the grown-up people too were in good spirits
inclined to believe in yet finer days, when the wind
had fallen.
If only the corn were not ripe enough to
be blown out of the husle and scattered as untimely
seed !
And yet a day on which a blighting sorrow may fall
upon a man. For if it be true that Nature at certain mo-
ments seems charged with a presentiment of one individual
lot, must it not also be true that she seems unmindful
unconscious of another? For there is no hour that has
not its births of gladness and despair, no morning
brightness that does not bring new sickness to desola-
tion as well as new forces to genius and love. There are
so many of us
and
our lots, are so different, what
wonder that Nature's wood is often in harsh contrast
with the great crisis of our lives? We are children of

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122
a large family, and must learn as such children do,
not to expect that our hurts will
be made much of -
to be content with little nurture and caressing, and
help each other the more (21).
There is a great deal to admire here - the easy
modulation from description to comment,the local felicity
of " untimely seed" (it is about now that Hetty's child is
conceived),the way in which "blighting sorrow" is revived
by its context and so on. But the important thing about
the passage is its function within the total work.
If landscape and weather are closely related to
human activities, then man is consistently seen in natural
terms. Human life and growth are part of a larger natural
process :
Wo can never recall the joy with which we laid our
heads on our mother's bosom or rode on our father's
back in childhood. Doubtless that joy is wrought up in-
yo our nature, as the sunlight of long-past mornings is
wrought up in the soft mellowness of the apric~t (21).
The story itself is seen in these terms; at the
end, with the marriage of Dinah and Adam, Irwine asks him-
self "what better harvest from that painful seed - time
could there be than this ?" (23).

---

123
Natural
imagery has one other main function in
Adam Bede, it helps to convey the impression of a lengthy
process, in a short time. In the last chapter, George Eliot
is at pains to try
to distract our attention from her con-
triving hand by conspicuously interesting us in Adam's court-
ship of Dinah as a process of nature. She puts a special em-
phasis on this and forces on us the knowledge of lithe slight
words, the timid looks, the tremulous touches, by which two
human souls approach each other gradually, like two little
quivering rainstreams, before they mingle in one ll (24).
Here she uses the same method for Adam and Dinah
as she has already used for Arthur and Hetty when she descri-
bes how they "mingle as easy as two brooklets that ask for
nothing but to entwine themselves and ripple with overinter-
lacing curves into the leafiest hiding-places" (25). (ch.12).
Again, describing Adam's feelings, for the same
effect, she writes :
Strange, that till that moment the possibility of
their ever being lovers had never crossed his mind, and
yet now, all his longing suddenly went cut towards that
possibility. He had no more doubt or hesitation as to
his own wishes than the bird that flies towards the ope-
ning through which the daylight gleams and the breath
of heaven enters.

---

i 2 ~
The automnal Sunday sunshine soothed him~ but not
preparing him with resignation to the disappointment
of his mother - if he himself - proved to be mistaken
about Dinah. It soothed him by gentle encouragement of
his hopes. Her love was so like that calm sunshine that
they seemed to make one presence to him~ and he belie-
ved in them both alike. And Dinah was so bound up with
the sad memories of his first passion that he was not
forsaking them~ but rather giving them a new sacredness
by loving her. Nay~ his love for her had grown out of
that past: it was the noon of that morning (26).
Eliot here is trying to justify Adam's sudden lo-
ve for Dinah and to prepare us for the subsequent marriage
But in this she fails~ for we are all the same taken unawa-
res when that marriage comes about.
But if this attempt at foreshortening by the assi-
milation of human love to natural process is not quite suc-
cessful in
Adam Be.de., it is remarkable in the
M.Lt-€.
011
the.
F-€. 0 .0.0 : St e phen and t~ a ggi ear e 11 b0 r ne a 10 ng by the t i. dell -
as indicates the chapter heading - And Maggie1s moral and
emotional drift is conveyed in terms of the river as we have
seen ea r l t e r , until both literally and metaphorically she
and Stephen~ yielding to their desires~'pass the point of
no return.

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125
To end up with the assimilation of human love to
natural process, let us take one last example from
Middte.-
Ma~~h. It is a passage we have already quoted but for ano-
ther purpose. This passage confirms Eliot's reluctance or
incapacity to describe
scenes of passion, or the evolution
of passion. She avoids this by using a pre-selected natural
imagery. In this case it is the web.
Young love-making - that gossamer web! Even the
points it clinge to - the things whence its subtle in-
terlacings are swung - are scarcely
perceptible; mo-
mentary touches of finger-tips, meetings of says from
blue and dark arbs, unfinished phrases, lightest chan-
ges of cheek and lip, faintest tremors. The web itself
is made of spontaneous beliefs and indefinable joys,
yearnings of one life towards another, visions of com-
pleteness, indefinite trust. And Lydgate fell
to spin-
ning that web from his inward self with wonderful rapi-
dity ... as for Rosamond, she was in the water-lilly's
expanding worlderment at its own ful12r life, and she
too was spinning industriously at the mutual web(27).
Water is another source of imagery common to all
George Eliot's novels.
The 1\\lttt 011 .the. Fto~!J
has a solid unity in image-
ry; its source is the river. The river in this novel is cen-

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126
i s
t r all y the rea s a l i t era 1 fa c t; i: t Va 11- per va din g and t 0 a 1a r -
ge extent it governs the lives and destinies of all the cha-
racters in the novel. It is the
source of Mr Tulliver's ruin.
And that of Bob Jakin's livelihood; and from
beginning
to
. end it governs Mary's life. Related to the river thus
are a large number of images. As an example this passage from
Book VI
:
Maggie's destiny, then, is at present hidden, and
we must wait for it to reveal itself like the course
of an unmapped .r i ve r , We only know that the river is
full and rapid, and that for all rivers there is the
same final
ho me " (28).
The book is literally soaked through, if I may say
so, with the frequent use of water imagery. We are told of
th
b d
f
t
k
1\\
t t
q
~
h
d
e
0 y 0
a wa er-sna e as a serpen lne wave; OT t e wor s
that IIfell on Tom like a scolding l t q ui d!"; a few lines la-
ter, he finds himself, II s uddenly transported from the easy,
carpeted ennui 07 study - hours at Mr Stelling's ... to the
companionship ... of bawling men thundering down heavy weights
at his elbow 11 (29). And we are made familiar with uses of
language such as IIflood of emotion ll, IIcurrent of feeling ll,
II stream of vanityll; music is visualized as a water element:
Maggie says that II music seems to infuse'strength into my
limbs and ideas into my brains ll.

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127
In Adam B~d~,
the river is the cause of Mr Bede1s-
Adam ' s father - death. Accordingl ey ,
"Adam's mind rushed
back over the past in a flood of relenting and pity"(30).
And the pool in the wood represents Hetty's suicidal aspi-
rations: she was 1I1 0 0 ki ng before her with blank, beautiful
eyes; fancying herself at the edge of a hidden pool, low
down; wondering if it were very painful to be d ro wn e d " (31).
La ter
IIShe sat still again looking at the pool. The soo-
thed sensation that cause over from the satisfaction
of her hunger, and this fixed dreamy attitude, brought
on drowsiness, and presently her head ~ank down on her
knees
(32).
Later, she "sank down on the straw with a sense
of escape 11. After VJe are told that she escaped" from the
~
bIti vtk.
')f the b1a c k col d deat h i nth e p0 0 1 11 •
With the inclusion of a connotative heading like
"Hee t i nq streams", V(tIli~.t Veltonda
s t a ncs no chance to escape
water imagery. Thus we have Deronda "r ow i nq his daltk.-6,tue
shirt and skull-cap, his ~Ultl6 closely clipped, his mouth be-
set wit h ab un dant so f t Wet V C~
0 f
be a r d s (c h . 17 ). His s hi r t
has the colour of the sea, while his curls are in harmony
with the movement of the litoral waves. And we are told of
"the vocal sounds (that) came with more significance than

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128
if they had been an insect - murmur amidst the sum of Qu~~ent
no i s e s " (ch.I?). And again
"Der onda of late, in his solita-
ry excursions (on the river), had beenoccupied chiefly with
uncertainties about his own course 11 and we might add: not
the river's. The IIcoursell here is used in the same sense as
Tom uses it in Th~ Mill on the Flo~~
When he says to Maggie:
"The r e are but t\\'IO courses for you to take: either
you vow solemnly to me with your hand on my father's
Bible that you will never have another meeting or speak
another word in private with Philip Wakem, or you refuse
and I t ell my fat her eve r y - t hi ng 11 (34).
In this passage, the word course is restricted to
a pattern of behaviour, in Vaniel Ve~onda, it is the course
of life in general.
But I think that HiddJ:.ema~Qh is the novel in which
Eliot
makes a lavish use of water imagery, and this the more
as it is restricted to two only characte;s : symbolic Mr Broo-
ke , who "J s a very good fellow, but pulpy; he will run into
any mould,but
he won't keep s ha pe " (35). But only once is
poor l'lr Csanbon
referred to~~n 11 ungauged
r e s e r vo i r "
and we know that it is an irony. But apart from that and alas!
more realistically, he is referred to as a IIdried
bookworm ll
11
a murnrny '", "a great bladder for dried peas to rattle in",
11
a dry r e qi onv , "a shallow rill", as one with the heart

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129
II not of the melting sort ll , or one who IIdoes not want drying ll ,
or IIchooses to grow grey crunching bones ll •
In short, water and its antitheses make recurrent
literal or metaphorical apparitions in the four novels we
are concerned with here. It certainly is not by chance that
each of them includes a Book or a chapter with a heading re-
ferring to water. We have, in a chronological order:
-
11
the Bitter Wa:te.Ju> Spread 11 (Adam Bede Bk V, ch.XL).
-
11
Borne Along By the T..i.de III(The Mill on the Floss Bk 6,
chapter 13).
-
11
Miss ~/to~fze.
(t·liddlemarch'~ Book one).
- 't'leeting S:t/te.am-6 11 (Daniel Oeronda Book Two)
From the water, let us step back onto the earth,
under which Eliot finds another natural imagery. This time
we deal with "r oo t s ". Hetty Sorrel in Adam Be.de. t s so easily
alienated because she lacks roots-another commonplace which
is given new metaphorical body in the novel:
There are some plants that have hardly any roots;
you may tear them from'their nook or rock or wall, and just
lay them over your ornamental flower plot, and they blossom
nC1e the worse. Hetty could have cast all
her past life be-
hind her, and never cared to be reminded of t t aqa i n" (36).
v
While Mrs Poyser1s conviction is that:

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130
"1 should be loath to leave th'old place and the
parish where I was bred and born, and father afore me.
We should leave our roots behind us, I doubt, and never
thrive again" (37).
Now, we are explained in the Mill on the Flo~~, the
rea son why r~ r s Poy s e r 11 s h0 u1d loa t h t 0 1e a vet h I old p1ace 11 ;
it is because:
There is no sense of easelike the ease we felt in
those scenes where we were born, where objects became
dear to us before we had known the labour of choice,
and where the outer world seemed-only an extension of
our own personality, we accepted and loved it as we ac-
cepted our own sense of existence and our own limbs. Very
commonplace, even ugly, that furniture of our early home
might look if it were put up to anction; an improved
taste in upholstery scorns it; and is not the striving
after something better and better in our surroundings,
the grand c~aracteristic that distinguishes man from the
brute - or, to satisfy scrupulous accuracy of definition,
that distinguishes the British man from the foreign bru-
te? But heaven knows where that striving might lead us
if our affections had not a trick of twinning round tho-
se old inferior things if the loves and sanctities of
our life had no deep immovable roots in memory (38).

---

1 3 1
This is why Tom 11 was thinking
that he would buy
his father's mill and land again when he was rich enough and
improve the house and live there; he should prefer it to any
smarter newer pl ac e " (39). Also, we can understand Mr Tulli-
ver feeling lithe strain of this clinging affection for the
old home as part of his life, part of himself. He couldn't
bear to think of himself living on any other spot than this ll
( 40) .
~Ji 11 Ladi sl aw who "has the sort of enthusi asm for
liberty, freedom, emancipation" (41) is referred to with scorn
be c a use he i s a for e i gne r_ who
for the r·l i dd1emarc her s , i s the
equivalent of being rootless~
IIHe is said to be of fo-
reign extraction" (42). Note the particular force given to
the word "extraction". Only something rooted or solidly fixed
can be extracted. Mr Brooke gives a logical response to
that image when he announcesto Mr Casanbon that
"Nr Ladislaw wishes to have some fixed occupation.
He has bee~ blamed, he says, for not seeking something
of that kind, and he would like to stay in this .neig-
bourhood because no
one cares for him el s ewh e r e " (43).
So, feeling and attachment work as fertilizers for
roots to take on, as is made explicit in Will's entreaty to
Dorothea

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132
III have been blamed for thinking of prospects, and
not settlinganything. And there is something offered
to me. If you would not like me to accept it, I will gi-
ve it up. Otherwise I would rather stay in this part
of the country than go away. I belong to nobody anywhe-
re else ll (44).
But if Will is looking for a good and solid ground
to invest his affection in, IIthis blessed persistence in
which affection can take root had been wanting in Gwendolen '
s I i f e " (45).
In her own home, she was "Li ke a princess in
e xi l e " (46); so much she was detached. At this stage she is
the selfish, spoiled child. But her attitude towards her root
alters with her moral evolution. In the moment preceding her
regeneration, Gwendolen had a
wakeful vision of Offendene and Pemicote under
their cooler lights. She saw the grey shoulders of the
downs, the cattle specked fields, the shadowy planta-
tions with rutted lanes where the barked timber lay for
a wayside seat, the neatly-clipped hedges on the road
from the parsonage to Offendene, the avenue where she
was gradually discerned from the windows, the hall-door
opening, and her mother or one of troublesome sisters
coming out to meet her. All that biref experience of a
quiet home which had once seemed a dullness to be fled
from, now came back to her as a restful escape, a sta-
tion where she found the breath of morning and the

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133
unreproaching voice of birds (47).
As to Daniel Deronda, he has, from his early child-
hood, ever been in quest of his roots:
Daniel fancied, as older people do, that everyone
else's consciousness was as active as his own on a mat-
ter which was vital to him ... How could he be like his
mother and not like his father? His mother must have
been a Mallinger, if Sir Hugo were his uncle. But no!
His father must have been Sir Hugo's brother and have
changed his name, as Mr Henleigh Mallinger did when he
married Miss Grandcourt.
But then why had he never heard Sir Hugo speak of
his brother Deronda, as he spoke of his brother Grand-
court? Daniel had never before cared about the family
tree ... But now his mind turned to a cabinet of estate-
maps in the library, where he had once seen an illumina-
ted parchmpnt hanging
out, that Sir Hugo said was the
family tree. The phrase was new and odd to him - he was
a little fellow then - and he gave it no precise mean
ing (48).
But he somehow felt that it h~d some connection with
lies present rootlessness. That is why he never was at rest
until he found his origin, his root.

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134
b - Human and Animal
We should distinguish between those occasions where
images referring to animals form part of the natural flavour
of a character1s speech - to Mrs Payser men are IIdumb creatures ll
and Barthe Massey thinks of his pet bitch as
lithe woman in the
house ll and his reflections on canine nature are also his reflec-
tions on female nature - and those when they form part of the
author's commentary or analysis.
In this latter case, they are
nearly always mocking or ironic, pointing either to similarities
between the human and the animal creation of which the charac-
ters themselves are unconscious, or to dis~repancies which are
not entirely to man's advantage. And behind their comic or ironic
aspects, these commentaries and analyses carry the wider pers-
pective and a greater weight of moral judgments.
Here are some analogies:
1°) Men and animals alike are helpless face to the natural
process:
But all this while Mrs Tulliver was brooding over a scheme
by which she, and no one else, would avert the result most
to be dreaded, and prevent Wakem from entertaining the
purpose of bidding for the mill.
Imagine a truly respectable
and amiable hen, by some portentous anomaly, taking to
reflection and inventing combinations by which she might
prevail on Hodge not to wring her neck, or send her and
her chicks to market
the result could hardly be other
than much cackling and fluttering (49).

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135
The same theme is found in Mlddlema~~h but is expressed in
evolutionary terms
We know what a masquerade all development is~ and what
effective shapes may be disguised in helpless embryos.
In fact~ the world is full
of hopeful analogies and hand-
some dubious eggs called possibilities (50).
2°) Man~ like the animal ~ is to exploit instinctively~ the
ability Nature endows him with:
Perhaps it was ,because teaching came naturally to Mr Stelling~
that he set about it with that uniformity of method and
independance of circumstances, which distinguish the actions
of animals understood to be under immediate teaching of
nature (51).-
And again:
Besides, how should Mr Stelling be expected to know that
education was a delicate and difficult business? Any
more than an animal endowed with a power of boting
a hole
through a rock should be expected to have wide views of
excavation (52).
3°) The instinct of conservation is deep-seated in man and
animal:
When the animals entered the Ark in pairs, one may imagine
that allied species made much private remark on each other,
and were tempted to think that so many forms feeding on the
same store of fodder were eminently superfluous, as tending
to diminish the rations!
(I fear that the part played by

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136
the vultures on that occasion would be too painful for
art to represent, those birds being disadvantageously
naked about the gullet, and apparently without rites and
ceremonies),
The same sort of temptation befell the Christian Carnivora
who formed Peter Featherstone's funeral procession (53) ...
But Eliot seems to say that the human predators are but misera-
ble cowards -'
,
'.
Tom, terrorizing the farmyard animals, indicates, thus early,
that desire for mastery over the inferior animals -wild and
domestic, including cockchapers, neighbour's dogs, and small
sisters - which in all ages has been an
attribute of
much pro-
mise for the fortunes of our race. Now, Mr Pullet never rode
anything taller than a low pony, and was the least predatory
of men ... (54).
One notices the carefully casual inclusion of "s ma l l sisters"
and the way in wh i c h the first sentence s pi l l s over into
IIpredatoryll of the second.
But Eliot, alw~ys careful to strike a balance, uses the same
imagery to assert antithetical moral judgments: thus we have
animal imagery to characterize the charm of young children;
they are like animals in their innocence
IIWe learn to restrain ourselves as we get older: We keep
apart when we have quarrelled, express ourselves in well-
bred phrases, and in this way preserve a dignified aliena-
tion, showing much firmness on one side, and swallowing much
grief on the other. We no longer approximate in our behaviour

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137
to the mere impulsiveness of the lower animals, but conduct
ourselves in every respect like members of a highly civi-
lized society. Maggie and Tom were still very much like
young animals, and so she could rub her cheek against his,
and kiss his e a r ain r a ndom , sobbing way, and there were
tender fibres in the lad that had been used to answer
Maggie's fondling ... (55).
The spontaneity and tenderness of children is here a judgment
on the repression and restraint of adult life, though Eliot is
aware of the fact that adults behaving like this would be dama-
gingly immature or simply ludicrous.
Most of Eliot's egoists are characterized in part by
animal imagery, what may seem attractive about them (their
IIkittenish ll or IIpuppyishll characteristics) is not necessarily
charming, or flattering, for it can easily turn into an index
of their moral inadequacy. The clearest example of this is
certainly Hetty who'lI wa s like a kitten, and had the same dis-
tractingly pretty looks ll (56) and hers II wa s a spring-like
beauty, it was the beauty of young frisking t hi nqs " (57). But
this note changes after her seduction, in her journey to and
from Windsor she is gradually alienated from human nature until
she seeks shelter in a sheepfold; finally with the murder of
her child she is alienated from nature itself.
In the prison "Hetty kept her eyes fixed on Dinah's face -
at first like an animal that gazes, and gazes, and keeps aloof ll
(58). She herself has been looked at earlier "w i t h a slow bovine

---

1 3 B
qa z e " (59). Deronda is offered a more lyrical sight as his eyes
met Mirah's, for IIher look was something like that of a fawn
or other gentle animal before it turns to run away:
no blush,
no special alarm, but only some timidity which yet could not
hinder her from a long look before she t ur ne d " (60).
In all
these examples, men are compared to animals, or present certain
aspects which characterize animals. But there is here an extre-
me example in which men are assimilated to animals trying to
be corn e hum an.
I n Ada In Bed e., ch. 21, we ha ve Bar the t1l ass ey , s
mature students who
look
as if three rough animals
were making humble efforts to learn how they might become
human. Note that they were not just downright animals, but
II r ough animals ll •
c - Man and childhood -
To come back to Hetty, her moral life is not conveyed
only in terms of animals. She is also viewed as one child in
Nature's large family. Thus the childishness of Hetty is equally
insisted on, not only to point the pathos of her plight, but
also to convey her moral narrowness. She is literally almost
a child as Adam pOlnts out on many occasions - she is only
seventeen when the action takes place. We have seen that Dinah
thinks of her as a poor child, ill-equipped to deal with the
demands of maturity, When she reads Arthur's letter she sees
i nth e mi r r 0 r 11 a whit e ma r b1e fa ce \\</ i t h r a.u nde d chi 1d ish for ms ,
but with something sadder than a child's pa i n" (61), and when
she is pregnant, she feels II s omething else would happen - to
set her free from this dread
In young, childish, ignorant souls

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139
there is constantly this blind trust in some unshapen chance ll
(62) (This, in Hetty is a diminished
parallel to Arthur's
egoistic belief in the intervention of Providence). The most
important here is that if, at first in prison she is like an
animal, later when she has repented and confessed, she obeys
Dinah IIlike a little child".
In this way, we see the central
metaphor of Nature's family, radiate throughout the book.
Perhaps it is not by chance that Dinah (like Arthur and Hetty)
is an only child and an orphan
and that of the three of
them, she is the only one that has learnt the lesson of the
large familyll not to expect that our hurts will be made much
of - to be content with little nurture and caressing, and help
each other the more 11 (63).
Falling back into childhood is a positive evolution
in George Eliot's moral process, as we have just seen with
Hetty in Adam Bede; For children are wonderfully spontaneous
and innocent, and they know no inhibition whatever.
In the
reconcilation of Maggie and Tom, at the very end of the book,
we are told that: there had risen in (grown-up) Tom a repul-
sion towards Maggie that derived its very intensity from their
early childish love in the time when they had clasped their
tiny fingers t oqe t he r " (64).
But what separates them also unites them ~ the above passage
finds an answer at the moment when they drown,
living through again in one supreme moment the days when
they had clasped their little hands in love and roamed
the daisied fields together (6~).

---

1 ~ 0
Maggie and Tom have so reconquered their childhood, at whatever
rtk of sentiment ality. At the end of Vani~{ V~~onda, Gwendolen
after her moral regeneration, is a kind of child. Gwendolen's
relationship to Deronda throughout
the book is that of a
pupil and master, a confessee and confessor, a child and his
mentor. The culture of that relationship bears a fruit, and that
is Gwendolen's new soul. Gwendolen is therefore in a way re-
born and her soul
is as delicate and fragile and well-disposed
as that of a chi 1d.
To Deronda she says
"Te l l me what I can
doll; III want to be qood " ; IIWhat ought I to do?1I (66), and
Deronda advises her to start a new life
IIThis sorrow, which has cut down to the root, has come to
you while ~ou are so young - try to think of it, not as
a spoiling of your life, but as a preparation for it. Let
it be a preparation, a vision of possible degradation
think that a severe angel, seeing you along the road of
error, grasped you by the wrist, and showed you the honour
of the life you must avoid. And it has come to you; in your
spring-time. Think of it as a preparation. You can, you will,
be among the best of women, such as make others glad that
they were bor n " (67).
Note the emphatic position of IICut down to the r oot " in elliptic.
Now that she is unrooted, she has to start afresh, on another
ground, another basis.
IISevere a nqe l " here fits well in a lan-
guage to children. And the final
"b or n"
enjoys all its literal
and metaphorical strength, because all the passage is full of
quiet, unobstrusive metaphors. As she learns Deronda's departure,
she looks at h-im "wt t h lips childshly pa r t e d ".

---

1 4 1
Afterwards
Sobs rose, and great tears fell
fast.
Deronda would not
let her hands go-held them still with one of
his, and
himself pressed her handkerchief against her eyes. She sub-
mitted like a half-soothed child, making an effort to speak
(68).
At the close of their last interview, we witness two children
parting :
"She bent forward to kiss his cheek, and he kissed hers.
Then they looked at each other for an instant with clasped
hands, and he turned away (69).
But for the a dd t t i on of "a nd he turned away·, this scene would
have strongly suggested the last scene between Maggie and Tom.
At a greater scale, Deronda is the newly-revealed child of his
Nation, and Gwendolen a young bird, newly got out of her egoistic
shell and eager to adapt herself to the world, no matter how
difficult this might be, no matter how long it might take.
As for Dorothea, she is "1 a femme-enfant" who expe-
riences her fall
from innocence to experience. Her process is
almost static because she only switches from childishness to
childlikeness, and there is a number of childish associations
clustering round her character.
1°) Childish association: We are told that
Dorothe~ retdined very childlike ideas about marriage ...
The really delightful marriage must be that where your

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142
husband was a sort of father (70).
Her age is made much of : for Sir James, she is a IIDesdemona ll
(71) for others "s he is too young to know what she I i ke s " (72)
Eliot herself does not miss an occasion to put an emphasis of
Dorothea's age, as suggests the following passage
For Dorothea, after that toy-box history of the world
adapted to young ladies which had made the chief part of
her education, Mr Casanbon's talk about
his great book
was full of new vistas (73).
For Sir James, Dorothea is irresponsible
It was wicked to let a young girl blindly decide her fate
in that way, without any effort to save her (74).
She is inexperienced:
To Dorothea's inexperienced sensitiveness, it seemed like
a catastrophe, changing all
prospects (75).
But this seems to be the starting point to maturity
However
just her indignation might be, her ideal was not
to claim justice, but give tenderness (76).
And since only real, mature women are capable of tenderness, we
are allowed therefore to deduce that Dorothea has attained matu-
rity. Thus, she has lost her lIideal ll :
her Paradise in her mar-
riage to Casanbon .But she has gained experience.
2°) Childlike associations:
If Dorothea is childish with Casau-
ban, she is childlike in her relationship with Will. An example
III am indebted to the rain, then.
I am so glad to see y ou ".
Dorothea uttered these common words with the simple sincerity
of an unhappy child; visited at school
(77).

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143
Another example which suggests yo~th :
Each looked at the other as if they had been two flowers
which had opened then and there (78)
Again, later we find them
looking at each other like two fond children who were talking
confidentially of birds (79)
"
And later still, at the moment of their crisis
Dorothea darted instantaneously from the window, Will follo-
wed her, seizing her hand with a spasmodic movement; and
so they stood, with their hands clasped, like two children,
looking out on the storm (80).
We are somehow made uneasy by this persistent childlike behaviour.
For we saw DOrothea as maturing through the painful education
of her marriage to Casanbon. We saw her as growing out of her
initial childishness.
That she should have her present con-
duct with Will
is almost felt as a regression from her hard-won
maturity. However, Ladislaw has °a vision of their world: a to-
tally inadequate and unreal image of that archetypal childhood
state, Paradise:
All their vision, all their thought of each other, had been
as in a world apart, where the sunshine fell on tall white
lilies, where no evil lurked, and no other soul-entered.
But now - would Dorothea meet him in that world again?
( 8 1 ) .
Of course, she does, and they comfortably live in her Paradise
Regained.

---

Human and natural, moral and animal, civil i z e d and
primitive are all interwoven in George Eliot's images, for her
imagery embodies her conception of the way human beings are
rooted in nature and are the very expression of Nature.
2 - IMAGERY DRAWN FROM ART
a - Theatre
One of the great, commonplace images by which man
has explored his sense of himself and his role in the world
is best expressed in the speech beginning IIAll the world's
a stage' from 11;\\.6 you f.~f<.e- et:": In spite of its simplicity,
this famous speech is part of a fairly complicated dramatic
situation; there is Jacques, a character within the play,
commenting on life in terms of an extended analogy between
the real world and the theatre.
It is as though he had reversed
the normal relationship between actor and audience.
IIYou
sitting out there in the theatre ll , he is implying that the
spectators, who think they are merely watc~ing a play, are
in fact characters in some great drama of life and are each
\\
I
\\
I
acting their Own roles, so that he and they stand on the same
point and that consequently what they are enjoying as a fiction
is really a true image of their own condition.
This notion that the world is a stage and that we
are all acting our own parts in the great drama of life is not,

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145
we can see, George Eliot's invention.
It would take far too
long to trace its history, but I quoted Shakespeare here only
to stress that this notion would have been commonplace by the
time George Eliot came to write. Especially as Thackeray, her
immediate predecessor, had also exploited the same theme. The
idea is, just as a dramatist creates his play, so God creates
the world and allots to all of us our respective roles. This
is indeed a very pessimistic notion because it implies that
our parts are predetermined, written for us. But the point
of this notion is primarily a moral one- even if our parts
are written for us, then how well we play them is incombent
to us alone. The analogy preserves man's moral dignity and
significance; we can still tell a good actor from a bad actor,
a good man from ~ bad man. The novelist stands in much the
same relation to the novels as God stands to the world, with
the difference that where God is totally invisible behind his
creation, the novelist sets the scene, and expatiates on his
characters. Here is for example an extreme instance of Thacke-
ray's deliberate intrusion into his work.
It is an extract
from the prologue to Vanity FaiJt, called "Before the curtain"
As the Manager of the Performance sits before the curtain
on the boards, and looks into the Fair, a feeling of pro-
found melancholy comes over him in his survey of the bust-
ling place. There is a great quantity of eating and drin-
king making love and jilting, laughing and the contrary,
smoking, cheating, fighting, dancing and fiddling:
there
are bullies pushing about, bucks ogling the women, knaves
picking pockets, policemen on the look-out, quacks (othe~
quacks. plague take them !) bawling in front of their booths,

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146
and yokels looking up at the tinselled dancers and poor
old rouged tumblers, while the li~ht-fingered folk are
operating upon their pockets behind. Yes, this is VANITY
FAIR; not a moral place certainly; nor a merry one,
though very noisy. Look at the faces of the actors and
buffoons when they come off from their business; and
Tom Fool washing the paint off his cheeks before his seats
down to dinner with his wife and the little Jack Puddings
behind the canvas. The curtain will be up presently, and
he will be turning over head and heels, and crying "How
are you ?".
This prologue, with its melancholy, is echoed in the famous
conclusion of the novel
"Ah ! Val1--lta-6 Val1--ltatu.m ! Which of us is happy in this
world? Which of us has his desire? Or, having it, is
satisfied? - Come children) let us shut up the box and
the puppets, for our play is played out.
Thus, far from being an intrusive flow, Thackeray's performance
as stage manager is necessary for the success of his art and
his moral purpose. By his deliberate, self-regarding showman-
ship he does directly what Shakespeare does obliquely through
Jacques, a character; he opens the frontiers between the worlds
of literature and life so that actor and audience, character
and reader, may more easily communicate and interact.
I have briefly glanced at Thackeray's use of omnis-
cient narration simply to show th~t there was a tradition which

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147
George Eliot inherited but only modified. A tradition which
had already made use of the analogy between life and drama.
The stoicism and the melancholy inherent in the life - stage
analogy would accord naturally with George Eliot's mood. Th e
role of the actor contained within the play of life would adapt
very well to George Eliot's vision of man as both free and
yet determined.
Perhaps we should now deal with the more obvious
and local ways in which the life-drama analogy manifests itself
in George Eliot's fiction.
For, like Thackeray's, her novels
are full of imagery and other linguistic patterns wich depend
on the basic idea. All the world's a stage! These linguistic
patterns naturally vary a great deal
in importance and function.
As usual, we shall treat imagery from the literal pattern to
the more imaged.
I - LITERAL NARRATIVE
At the first level the linguistic patterns may become
part of the literal narrative, enacting wh~t images can only
suggest. To illustrate this, we have the conclusion of The Mill
on the Flo~~ which enacts the anticipatory images of flood and
natural catastrophe. Another example is found in Middlema~ch,
with Lydgate's youthful
infatuation with the French actress,
Madame Laure. She murders her husband and this act is not to
be distinguished from theatrical performance. But then, one
tends to think of that "charming stage Ariadne", Rosamond Vincy -

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1 48
who "wa s by nature an actress ...
: she even acted her own
character, and so well, that she did not know it to
be preci-
s e 1y her 0 wn11 (8 3) - and 1ink her wit h t~ a dame La ure. We s 0
gather that if Madame Laure murders her husband quickly, then
Rosamond's marriage to Lydgate is a slow-motion murder, as
Lydgate comes close to realising in chapter 81 :
IILydgate had accepted his narrowed lot with sad resigna-
tion. He had chosen this fragile creature, and had taken
the burden of her life upon his arms. He must walk as he
could carrying that burden pitifully (84).
II - ALLUSION
This imagery may manifest itself in the shape
of allusion in which the sense of similitude or disparity, or
a mixture of both, may be the important factor. And so we
have Mr Tulliver linked with Hotspur ; Maggie with Sir Andrew
Agnecheek ; Dorothea with Antigone and Imogen.
III -
FULLY DEVELOPED IMAGES
At the third level, the linguistic patterns may
take the form of fully developed images. George Eliot uses the
out
life - drama analogy to po i nt vo ne of her main moral themes.
Appearance and reality may be an exhausted ground in fiction,
but George Eliot is particularly concerned to point out the
dangers in the self-dramatizing, narcissistic nature of her

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149
egoists. These characters see life as conforming to their own
wishes and imagine themselves at the centre of the stage.
Here, I think, we must allow in as a reinforcing - thread
images which refer to other areas of the imaginative life,
particularly to life seen as romantic fiction. The most impor-
tant example is the role of Gwendolen Harleth in Vaniel Vehonda.
The narrowness of Gwendolen's egoistic outlook is conveyed
in theatrical
imagery; hers was a nconsciousness which was
busy with a small social drama almost as little penetrated by
a feeling of wider relations as if it had been a puppet shown
(85). Characteristically, Gwendolen takes Deronda for an exten-
sion of her self. In other words, he exists exclusively for
her. But Deronda, for his part, has his own aspirations which
he tries to ful~il. The moment he finds his identity coincides
naturally with Gwendolen's awakening to the truth about Deronda's
real function, or mission in life:
The world seemed getting larger round poor Gwendolen, and
she more solitary and helpless in the midst. The fuought that
he might come back after going to the East, sank before
the bewildering vision of these wide-stretching purposes
in which she felt herself reduced to ~ mere speck. There
comes a terrible moment to many souls when the great move-
ments of the world, the larger destinies of mankind, which
have lain aloof in newspapers and other neglected reading,
enter like an earthquake into their own lives - when the
slow urgency of growing generations turns into the tread
of an invading army, or the dire clash of civil war, and
grey fathers know nothing to seek for but the corpses of

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150
their blooming sons, aud
girls forget all vanity to make
lint and bandages which may serve for the shattered limbs
of their betrothed husbands
That was the sort of
crisis which was at this moment beginning in Gwendolen's
small life: she was for the first time feeling the pres-
sure of a vast mysterious movement, for the first time
being dislodged from her supremacy in her own world, and
getting a sense that her horizon was but a dipping onward
of an existence with which her own was revolving ... she
could not spontaneously think of (Deronda) as rightfully
belonging to others more than to her. But here had come
a shock which went deeper than personal jealousy - something
spiritual and vaguely tremendous that thrust her away, and
yet quelled all anger into self - humiliation (86).
The cosmic or geographical imagery is used to summarize the
difference between Gwendolen, to whom the world has been a
stage, and its people an attentive, partial audience; and
Deronda, who has made it the scene of his restless explora-
tions in London and Europe. As a matter of fact, Gwendolen's
character is clustered with theatrical associations. Here for
instance, they help to establish her ignorance. On a natura-
listic level, Gwendolen is a fumbling amateur compared with
Herr Klessmer, an eminent musician, or Deronda's mother, or
even Mirah ; the paramount of her achievement amowts
only
to graceful posturing in charades (which are to drama as
Gwen is to real life). Her professional hopes are shattered
by Klessmer who tells her to "clear your mind of these notions,

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1 51
which have no more resemblance to reality than a pantomime"
(87).
It is also in terms of a pantomime that Gwen1s relations
with Rex are defined:
The elders were not in the least alive to this agitating
drama which ~ent forward chiefly in a sort of pantomime
extremely lucid in the minds thus expressing themselves,
but easily missed by spectators (88).
Her playing at life is not more successful than her theatrical
ambition. Because she sees life essentially as a play, she
attempts to practise her art on Grandcourt, the results can
only be catastrophic. But try she does and at first Grandcourt
is prepared to play the game, to accept her on her own terms
Grandcourt preferred the drama; and Gwendolen, left at
ease, found her spirits rising continually as she played
at reigning (89).
Gwendolen seems satisfied. She "was just then enjoying the sce-
nery of her life" (90)
; she was "the heroine of an admired
play without the pains of art" (91). Soon, she realizes,
however, that she had more than met a fit partner in her hu~
band. Grandcourt, to whom appearances are of prime importance,
tells her in her own terms
"Oblige me in future by not showing whims
like a mad
woman in a play ... you will
please behave as becomes my
wife and not make a spectacle of yourself" (92).
And painfully keeping up appearances is what Gwendolen's
married life amounts to. No matter the role, Gwendolen is
b 0 un d toll P1 ay 1/ :

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152
Constantly she had to be on the scene as M~ Grandcourt,
and to feel herself watched in that part by the exacting
eyes of a husband who had found a motive to exercise
his tenacity - that of making his marriage answer all the
ends he chose, and with the more completeness the more
he discerned any opposing will in her. And she herself,
whatever rebellion might be going on within her, could
not have made up her mind to failure in her representa-
tion (93).
The image of the theatre is of course a natural vehicle for
expressing the favourite theme of illusion and reality. On
Gwendolen's wedding day:
When her husband said "He r e we are at home" ... it was
no more than the passive acceptance of a greeting in the
midst of an absorbing show. Was not all her hurrying life
of the last three months a show, in which her consciousness
was a wondering spectator? (94).
Deronda tells her th a t
"some real knowledge would give you
an interest in the world beyond the small drama of personal
desires" (95)
;
that "real knowledge" Gwen can only acquire
through sUfferi~g :nd by realizing that her part in the drama
of life is not the glamorous and applauded thing she took it
to be.
As always, we have the literal counterpart of the image pattern
There is Herr Klessmer, the eminent mUSician who says that
"No man has too much talent to be a musician. Most men
have too little. A creative artist is no more a mere mu-
sician than a great statesman is mere politician. We are

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1 53
not ingenious puppets, who live in a box and look out
on the world only when it is gaping for amusement. We
help to rule the nations and make the age as much as any
other public men. We count ourselves on level benches
with legislators. And a man who speaks effectively through
music is compelled to something more difficult than Par-
liamentary eloquence ll (96).
There is Deronda's mother in whom life and the stage are one
and continuous - III am not a loving woman. That is the truth.
It is a talent to love - I lacked it. Others have loved me -
I .have acted their l ove " (97). And there is Minah who tends
to see things in terms of her experience of the theatre
Her peculiar life and education had produced in her an
extraordinary mixture of unworldliness, with knowledge
of the world's evil, and even this ~nowledge was a strange
blending of direct observation with the effects of reading
and theatrical study. Her memory was furnished with abun-
dant passionate situation and intrigue, which she never
made emotionally her own, but felt a repelled aloofness
from, as she had done from the actual
life around her.
Some of that im~jinative knowledge began now to weave itself
around Mrs Grandcourt (98).
Life overtakes the theatre for Minah : IIWhat I have read
about and sung about and seen acted, is happening to me ll (99).
And finally, on a strictly physical level, we have Hans Meyrick
always caught up in theatrical attitudes. Let us quote a few
examples at random:
IIHans pretended to speak with a gasping

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1 54
s ens e 0 f sub 1 i mi t y, and dre w ba c k his he a d 'Id t hag row nil,
"Hans threw himself into a tragic attitude, and screamed"
"Here Hans laid down his pencil and palette, threw himself
backward into a great chair, and hanging limply over the
side, shook his long hair half over his face, lifted his hooked
of
fingers on each sideVhis head, and looked up with comic terror"
"Hans stood with his thumbs in the belt of his blouse listening
to this speech, his face showed a growing surprise melting
into amusement, that at last would have its way in an explo-
sive laugh" ; "Hans turned to paint as a way of filling up
awkward pauses" ; "Hans with provoking coolness, laying down
his tools, thrusting his thumbs into his belt, and moving
away a little, as if to contemplate his picture more delibe-
rately" (100). This aspect of his character takes effect only
when these are used cumulatively, for they are sustained by
no comment. But here is Minah to sum him up :
"He passes from one figure to another as if he were a bit
of flame where you fancied the figures without seeing
them ... he is so wonderfully quick.
I used never to like
comic things on the stage - they were dwelt on too long;
but all
in one minute Mr Hans makes himself a blind bard;
and then Rienzi addressing the Romans, and then an' opera-
dancer, and then a desponding young gentleman" (101)
She adds:
"Nr Hans (was) going through a sort of character
piece without changing his dress". Thus Hans's play is acted
on a superficial, physical level. He represents the farce while
all the others we have seen act in dramas and tragedies.

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155
The idea of life being a stage and its associated
imagery are fairly consistent throughout George Eliot's fiction.
One recalls Hetty Sorrel weaving her romantic dreams; she
finds a match in Arthur Donnithorne :
"Tt ' s a little drama
live got up in honour of my friend
Adam. He's a fine fellow and I like the opportunity of
letting people know that I think SOil.
"A drama in which friend Arthur piques himself on having
a pr e t t Y par t top 1ay ", s aid 1\\1 r I r win e , s mi 1i ng (1 02 ) .
Throughout the novel Arthur is "too much preoccupied with the
part he was playing" (103). Again, how to forget that even
in the ardour of Maggiels renunciation "her own life was
still a drama fDr her in which she demanded that her part
should be played with intensity (104). Or again, one thinks
of Rosamond who "e ve n acted her own character, and so well,
that she did not know it to be precisely her own ".
It might
not be superfluous to observe here that the distinguishing
feature of this analogy as it is used in Middfemah~h is
that it is applied impartially to all the characters. Thus
Casanbon is uneasily aware of the " c old, shadowy, unaplausive
audience of his life" (105), and much the same thing - though
with opposite effects applies to Fred Vincy :
Even much stronger mortals than Fred Vincy hold half
their rectitude in the mind of the being they love best.
"The theatre of all my action is fallen", said an antique
personage when his chief fortunate who get a theatre
where the audience demands their best.
(106).

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156
The analogy is also used to prevent any idealiza-
tion of hero and heroine. Mrs Cadwallader is not totally
wide of the truth about Dorothea's complacency in martyr -
dom when she remarks that Dorothea is II pl aying tragedy queen
and taking things s ub l i me l y " (107)
And Will asks Dorothea
IIWould you turn all the youth of the world into a tragic
chorus
,wailing and moralizing over misery ?II (108). As for
Will Ladislaw, he is one of those "ch a r a c t e r s which are conti-
nually creating co11isions and modes for themselves in dramas
which nobody is prepared to act with them ll (109)
; especially
if he is striking as "a sort of Byronic hero - an amorous
c ons pi r a t or " (110). He is "w i t hout any neutral
region of
indifference in his nature, ready to turn everything that
befell him into- the collisions of a passionate dr arna " (111).
IV - NEUTRAL WORDS
Finally, the linguistic patterns may, on the contrary,
reside in quiet, neutral words - words like .s ce ne , or :the.a:tJte.,
or :tJtaglc. - which in themselves entail no great analogical
potential, but which may acquire a ps e udo v.ne t a phor t c charge
from being put into relation with cognate but more sophisti-
cated linguistic patterns. Those neutral words generally indi-
cate one of the followings
perturbations of the mind. For example : "Naqqi e was ...
intensely conscious of some drama going forward in her fa-
ther's mi nd " (112).
liveliness of
imagination:
IIHetty her cheeks flushed
and her eyes glistening from her imaginary drama ll (113).

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157
- the implication of the characters in the great general
course of human nature and society:
"The tragedy of human
life" in Adam Bede, or "War, like other dramatic spectacles
might possibly cease for want of a public" in the Mill on
the Floss.
The above instances have a double function:
they
serve to extend the life-drama analogy to even more neutral
terms - words that, taken in isolation, might
seem
to
have nothing to do with the analogy. And they also provide
a back-ground from which George Eliot can slide unobtrusively
into rather more developed images illustrating the same point.
And we have,at random:
"the stranger ... had been f nt e r e s t e d
in the course of her (Dinah's) sermon, as if it had been the
development of a drama - for there is this sort of fascina-
tion in all sincere impremeditated eloquence, which opens
to one the inward drama of the speaker's emotions" (114);
"Inartistic figures crowding the canvas of life without ade-
quate effect ... play no small part in the tragedy of life"
(115)
; "plotting covetousness and deliberate contrivance,
in order to compa,s a selfish end, are nowhere abundant but
in the world of the dramatist; they demand too intens~ a
mental action for many of our fellow-parishioners to be guilty
of them" (116). This last example will make it obvious
that the life-drama analogy works interms of dis-
tinctions as well as similitudes. George ·Eliot is careful
to point out the ways in which all the world is not a stage.
This is important in many ways - for example, some of her

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158
characters come to grief because they think of life wrongly
in terms of this analogy.
But when she singles out the ways
in which life is not a stage
she brings to our minds those
t
points where the analogy is valid, and because of her careful
discrimination, convinces us the more easily of their validity.
The basic reason why life-drama analogy is successfully
exploited as a device to suggest the nature of man's
conditional freedom is that this analogy, as we said earlier,
is not isolated, but linked up
with all those other images
of natural process which we have analysed earlier. We are
thus inevitably brought back to the way in which at a linguis-
tic level
images and ideas intersect and interact; we see
how the different threads are woven together "into her "tangled
skein". The intersection may be at the level of those neutral
terms, so casual and brief that they never strike us in their
cumulative work. Thus the one word scene may point in two
directions, towards the natural scene and towards the stage.
"Marty and Tommy ... saw a perpetual drama going on in the
hedgerows" (117); "the drama that was going on was almost
as familiar as the scene" (118) ; "a green hollow (was) almost
surrounded by an amphitheatre of the pale pink dog-roses" (119) -
such phrases are literal or are dead metaphors. But they form
an unobstrusive background to rather more developed images
of the same thing. And we thus move gradually from neutrality
to something more partial like this
Sce ne s wh i c h 1'1 a ke vita 1 c ha nge sin 0 urn e i ghb0 ur s I
lot s
are but the background of our own, yet like a particular
aspect of the fields and trees, they become associated for

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159
us with the epochs of our own natural history, and make
a part that unity which lies in the selection of our
keenest consciousness (120).
Here ~~ene is pregnant with dramatic force from its context;
the gentry are looking down on the tableau - like procession
at Feartherstone's funeral:
"the country gentry of old time
lived in a rarefied social air: dotted apart on their sta-
. tions up the mountain they looked down, with imperfect discri-
mination on the belts of thicker life below".
And fromthis, we ascend to something slightly more
developed. George Eliot describing St Oggs society says
And the present time was like the broad plain where men
lose thei~ belief in volcanoes and earthquakes, thinking
tomorrow will be as yesterday and the giant forces that
used to shake the earth are for ever laid to sleep (121).
Comparing St Oggs society with deserted Rhone villages, she
says :
I have a cruel conception that these lines those ruins
are the traces of mere part of a gross sum of obscure
vitality that will be swept into the same oblivion
with the generations of ants and beavers.
And straightaway she applies this to the Dodsons and the
Tullivers, switching from the imagery of recapitulation to
the image of the stage ;"this old-fashioned family life on
the banks of the Floss, which even in sorrow hardly suffices
to life above the level of the tragi -c om i c ".

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160
This relation of Nature to stage becomes more emphatic; thus
within one paragraph, Mr Tulliver is described in these terms
And Mr Tulliver, you perceive, though nothing more than
a superior miller and maltster, was as proud and obstinate
as if he had been a very lofty personage, in whom such
dispositions might be a source of that conspicuous, far -
echoing tragedy, which sweeps the stage in regal
robes, and
makes the dullest chronicler sublime ... There are certain
animals to which tenacity of position is a law of life -
they can never flourish again after a single wrench; and
there are certain human beings to whom predominance is a
law of life ...
(122).
The rest of this paragraph, which modulates between these two
views of Tulliver as tragedy king and as tenacious animal,
states a very common theme in George Eliot1s fiction:
The pride and obstinacy of millers, and other insignificant
people, whom you pass unnoticingly on the road every
day, have their tragedy too; but it is of that unwept,
hidden sort, that goes on from generation to generation,
and leaves no record ...
(123).
George Eliot insists firmly on the fact that tragedy is to
be found not merely in high-life romance or in extreme situa-
tions, but in homely and monotonous existence, in the great,
ordinary course of everyday human life. All the world is a
stage; George frequently uses the life-drama analogy to
generalize her theme to implicate her readers, to appeal to
common human nat ur e . Thus she speaks, for example, of "that
partial, divided action, of our nature which makes the trage-
dy of human lot" (124)
such uppeals ate common in her fiction.
And she can involve us in her vision of humdrum tragedy by

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1 6 1
linking the life-drama analogy with imagery drawn from Nature
Some discouragement, some faintness of heart at the new
real futu~e which replaces the imaginary, is not unusual,
and we do not expect people to be deeply moved by what
is not unusual. That element of tragedy which lies in the
very fact of frequency, has not yet wrought itself into
the coarse emotion of mankind
and perhaps our frames
could hardly hear much of it.
If we had a keen vision and
feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like
hearing the ~rass grow and the squirrel's heart beat and
we should die of that roar which lies on the other side
of silence. As it is, the quickest of us walk about well
wadded with stupidity (125).
In other words, it is natlifLa£. that life should be tragic;
to have said that calmly, without indue emphasis, to have
given this recogni~ion its proper place and proportions within
our tot&l ~wareness of life, in all its mysterious complexity -
this is one of George Eliot's greatest achievements.
It is
part of the moral
nature of her fiction; she strips away
a little of our II wa dde d stupidityll and enables us a little
better to bear the burden of human reality. And she does more
than merely say this, we can almost say that she enacts it,
incarnates it in the structure of her stories, the nature of
her characters and, ultimately, in the complete patterns of
her language.

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162
What we must also bear in mind as far as life-drama
goes - is that E.liot uses the life-drama analogy to point one
of her main moral themes: the dangers in the self-dramatizing
narcissistic natures.
It is there also that the life-drama
analogy begiffi to tangle with the thread of Nature in George
Eliot's fiction.
For if characters dramatize themselves, then
as we saw earlier, Nature isllthat great tragic dramatist ll (126)
And if characters, because of their impulse to dramatize, de-
ceive both themselves and others, so Nature may deceptively
blend appearance and reality. When the stranger at Dinah's
preaching thinks that IINature never meant her for a preacher ll,
George Eliot comments
Perhaps he was one of those who think that Nature has
theatrical -porperties, and, with the considerate view
of facilitating and psychology, II makes Upll her characters
so that there may be no mistake about them (127).
We ought to be careful about the use of "ma ke up " here.
Nature does, in one sense, make us up, endow us with heredita-
ry attributes, compound, what we really are. But the reality
of our natural make-up is not to be confused with mere
appearance, with II make- upll in the theatrical, grease-paint
sense of th~ phrase. George Eliot's novels are full
of similar
warnings about the deceptions of the surface:
Eve r y ma nun de r s uc h c i r cum s tan c e s i s con s c i 0 us of
be i ng
a great physiognomist. Nature, he knows, has a language
of her own, which she uses with strict veracity, and he
considers himself an adept in the language ... Nature
has her language, and she is not unveracious ; but we don't

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163
know all the intricacies of her syntax just yet, and in
a hasty reading we may happen to extract the very opposite
of her real meaning (128).
This view is exploited and sustained in all George Eliot's
novel s , Here are a -f ew exampl es from the four novel s.
In The Mill on the Flo~~, Mr Tulliver talking of books,
says: 11 One mustn't judge by th'outside. This a puzzling
world"_(129)
Man also is a.book tobe.reac1. ~lJt_ the majority n f the
characters judge ot~ers by inf~renc~ :
Mrs Pullet had always thought it strange if Tom's
excellent complexion, so entirely that of the Dodsons,
dis'not argue a certainty that he would turn out
well? (130).
Mrs Tulliver says
"When I was young a br om skin wasn't thought well
on among respectable folks ' (131)
Maggie bursts ;out :
"I' m determined to read no more books where the blond-
haired women carry away all the happiness.
I should
begin to have a prejudice again~t them"
(132).
We can understand Magg~e's reaction when we come to consider
the lot s 0 f the dark - hair e d'.0 r dark - ski nne d- Her e \\'Je ha ve
t·, r Fea the r s ton e ma kin g "h a s t e 0 s ten tat i 0 usly t 0 i nt rod uce "
blond Rosamond "as his niece, though he had never thought it
,
worth while to speak of Mary Garth in that l i qh t " (133), no
won de r , "she had the aspect of an ordinary sinner: she was

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1 6 ~
brown; her curly dark hair was rough and stubborn; her
stature was low" (134). ~1rs Vincy confesses: "I must s ay
I think Mary Garth a dreadful
plain girl - more fit for a
g0 vern e ss" (1 35 ). t~ r s Far e brot her rea son s m0 res ens i b1y .Ta 1-
king of I~ary /
she remarks that "we must not always ask for
beauty, when a good God has seen fit to make an excellent young
woman without it. I put good manners first and Miss Garth will
know how to conduct herself in any station" (136). Rosamond
also holds the same language, but she does not mean what
she says:
"No one thinks of your appearance, you are so sen-
sible and useful, Mary.
Beauty is of very 1 ittle consequence
in
reality" (137), and as she says this, "her eyes swerve to-
wards the new view of her. ne c k in the glass". Because she was
be aut i f u1 and wen de r f u11y b10 nd, m0 s t men i n. ~,' i dd1emarc h ...
held that Miss Vincy was the best girl in the world, and some
called her an angel", but George Eliot is careful to stress
that her "eyes of heavenly blue (were) deep enough to hold
the most exquisite meanings an ingenious beholder could put
into them, and deep enough to hide the meanings of the owner
if these should happen to be less exquisite". Gwendolen was
like a princess in exile" : she was beautiful and her social
status was below the worth of her beauty.
As for Hetty Sorrel, only her physical
looks allows her to
.pretend to anything beyond a girl of her condition.
Thus, because our appearance supposedly determines
our life, and Nature is the author of our appearance, so Nature
would de t e r-m i ne us. At least that is what all these characters
as woll as ourselves, the readers would seem to infer.
In
this we are wrong, s~ems to say George Eliot. The way things

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1 65
work is not as easy as that. Yet, although George Eliot pushes
her analogy beyond the pointing of a moral theme on into the
area of metaphysical speculation - area into which I happily
do not need to venture
here - she uses it
to suggest those
aspects of man1s life in which he figures as a determined crea-
ture, the nature and expression of her determinism is felt to
be sincere, acceptable. We feel
this for many reasons; she
disperses her Determinism over a wide range of characters -
we do not feel
that anyone of them is singled out; then
on a local level, her expression is full
of tact; then in
its context, we respond to her remark about destiny as a trope.
She is careful to allow for same reciprocal action of character
and c i r cum s tan c e. "0uI' de e ds de t e r mi ne usa s muc has wed e t e r -
mine us as much as we determine our deeds". She defends her
view in The Mitt on the Fto~~.
But you have known Maggie a long while, and need to be
told, not her characteristics, but her history, which is
a thing hardly to be predicted even from the completest
knowledge of characteristics. For the tragedy of our lives
is not created entirely from within. "Character", says
Novalis in one of his questionable aphorisms - "Character
is destiny" But not the whole of our destiny. Hamlet, Prince
of Danmark,was speculative and irresolute, and we have a
great tragedy in consequence. But if his father had lived
to a good old age, and his uncle had died an early death,
we can conceive Hamlet's having married Ophelia, and got
through life with a reputation of sanity notwithstanding

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1 66
and some moody sarcasms towards the fair daughter of
Polonins. to say nothing of the frankest incivility of
his father-in-law (138).
Our deeds thus "de t e rm i ne us as much as we determine our deeds".
As much. but no more; the very syntax
suggests how scrupu-
lously the balance of force is preserved. Throughout her novels
she stresses the intermeshing of the human will with all those
forces she sometimes sums up as Nature or Destiny. This is
manifest in the following dialogue between Philip and Maggie
"0 ur life is determined for us - and it makes the mind very
free when we give up wishing. and only think of bearing
what is laid upon us, and doing what is given us to do".
"But I can't give up wishing". said Philip impatiently.
lilt seems to me we can never give up longing and wishing
while we are thoroughly alive" (139).
b -
t~ us i c .
If the world's a stage for which Nature provides
actors and setting, what is it that remains for the analogy
to be complete? Obviously the language.
In a play or in a
novel. we have monologues, and dialogues, and the stage manages
or the omniscient autho~ to tell us about the action, the
characters' motives and their feelings.
In life, we are res-
tricted to dialogue which we take with a grain of salt, mainly.
So that inference plays the biggest part in our attempts to
speculate into our neighbours' motives and feelings.
However,
that is not our problem here. What I actually want to get at
is that there i s c hap pt l y
another mode of expression, less

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167
straight-forward and yet most truthful, to say nothing of
the lyricism of its form.
I name music.
Music is a universal means of expressing emotion
and feeling.
In George Eliot's novels, that essential function
is preserved, basically, but, as we will see, she uses that
device for several purposes, and in the most economical way.
We shall adopt here our usual
vertical approach to imagery,
which goes from concrete or literal to metaphorical.
At the very bottom of the scale we have music in
the form of songs. They can be used for a further delineation of
a character's moral attitude. As an example we have Adam's song
in chapter one of Adam Be.de..The song enunciates his own 1i ne
of conduct and his moral attitude .
Awake, my sou 1 , and with the sun
Thy daily stage of duty run
Shake off dull sloth . . .
Let all thy converse be sincere,
Thy conscience as the noonday clear.
Let all thy converse be sincere
Thy conscience as the rn~onday clear
For God's all-seing eye surveys
Thy secret thoughts, thy works and ways (140).
Songs can also reveal the character's state of
mind. Seth Bede is losing any hope of being Dinah's lover
and in his half-despair, he sings a hymn which suits his state
of mind:

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168
Dark and c hear1e s s i s the m0 r n
Unaccompanied by thee
Joyless is the day's return
Till thy mercy's beans I see
Till thou inward light impart,
Glad my eyes and warm my heart.
Visit, then, this soul of mine,
Pierce the gloom of sin and grief -
Fill me, Radiancy Divine,
Scatter all my unbelief.
More and more thyself display,
Shining to the perfect day.
(141)
In the same light, we also have in Dinah's hymn,
the reflection of her inner conflict between her human love
for Adam and her religious vocation. She sings:
Eternal Beam of Light Divine,
Fountain of unexhausted love,
In whom the Father1s glories shine,
Through earth beneath and heaven above
Jesus! the weary wanderer's rest,
Give me thy easy yoke to bear;
With steadfast patience arm my breast,
With spotless love a nd holy fear.

---

Speak to my warring passions, "Peace !"
Say to my trembling heart, "Be still
!"
Thy power my strength and fortness is,
For all things serve thy sovereign will
(142).
To confirm our interpretation of the songs Eliot
comments
I cannot pretend that Seth and Dinah were anything else
than Methodists - not indeed of that modern type which
reads quarterly reviews and attends in chapels with pi1-
1ared porticoes, but of a very old-fashioned kind. They
believed in present miracles, in instantaneous conver-
sions in revelations by dreams and visions; they drew
lots, and sought for Divine guidance by opening the Bible
at hazard
having a literal way of interpreting the
Scriptures, which is not at all sanctioned by approved
commentators" (143).
Finally, and still in the same spirit, songs help
to establish or render the general state of mind of a group
or a multitude, to fix the general atmosphere in a community.
Psychologically speaking, the last, populctr song in Adam Bede
con ve y s the m0 r a 1 he a 1t h;n e s s 0 f the c 0 mmunit y 0 f Hay s lop e
after the tragedy~
It shows
that
things have come
back to normal
:
Here 1s a health into our master,
The founder of the feast ;
Here 1s a health into our master,
And to our mistress!

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170
And may his doings prosper,
Whatever he takes in hand,
For We are all his servants,
And are at his command.
Then drink, boys, drink!
And see ye do not spill,
For if ye do, ye shall drink hID,
For'tis our master's will.
(144)
Then we have a song as a medium through which a
character expresses his feelings, a kind of outlet even. But
here, the song is addressed directly to the object of one's
thought and ~ response is expected. We have Seth again, using
(with impunity) a hymn, to declare his love to Dinah. He
says:
"I often can't help saying of you what the hymn says"
In darkest shades if she appear,
My dawning is begun;
She i s my sou 1 "s brig ht m0 r ni ng- s tar,
And she my rising sun (145).
~inah responds by the negative.)
We are told in VanJ..e.t Ve.ttonda, that Klesmer "knew very well
t hat i f Mi s s Ar row p0 i nth a d bee n p0 0 r hew 0 u\\d ha ve ma de a r den t
love to her instead of sending a storm through the piano" (146).
Let us con s i de r t his pas sag e from T h(' M~ tt 011 ,Ut e U 0 -6,~. Phi 1i p
says:

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1 7 1
lilt's from the "Somnanb ul a ' - IIAh ! pe rche non posso odiarti ?
I don't know the opera, but it appears the tenor is telling
the heroine that he shall always love her though she may
forsake him. You've heard me sing it to the English words,
III love thee still ll ll
It was not quite unintentionally that Philip had-
wandered into this song, which might be au indirect expres-
sion to maggic of what he could not prevail on
himself to say to he r directly. He r ears had been open
to what he was saying, and when he began to sing, she
understood the plaintive passion of the music. That pleading
tenor had no very fine qualities as a voice, but it was
not quite new to her ... There seemed to be some reproach
in the words - did Philip mean that? She wished she had
assured him more distinctly in their conversation that
she desined not to renew the hope of love between them,
only because it clashed with her inevitable circumstances.
She was touched, not thrilled by the song
it suggested
distinct merno rt e s and t hou qh t s " (147).
And just before that,we are told that when invited to sing,
Philip
to sing
had brightened at the proposition,/ f or there is no feeling
perhaps, except the extremes of fear and grief, that does
not find relief in music, that does not make a man sing
or play the better; and Philip had an abundance of pent-
up feeling at this moment, as complex as any trio or quartet
that was ever meant to express love and jealousy, and resi-
9na t ion and fie r c e sus Pi c ion " a l 1 a t
the s a met i me (1 48 ) .

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172
We also have Stephen's apparently casual and innocent singing
The thirst that from the soul deth rise,
Ooth ask a drink divine (149).
Lucy, Philip and Maggie are present, and we know that the
song appeals to Maggie. Lastly, we have Will IS solitary infa-
tuation for Oorothea. But Dorothea is not there to hear him -
which stresses the fact of their estrangement - The mere thought
of seeing Dorothea and annoying Casanbon makes him all song:
0_ me, 0 me, what f r ugal c hear
My love doth feed upon !
A touch, a ray, that is not here,
A shadow that is gone
A dream of breath that might be near,
An only-echoed tone,
The thought that one may think me dear,
The place where one was known,
The tremor of a banished fear,
An ill that was not done -
o me, 0 me, .....,hat f rug a1 chear
My love doth feed upon!
(150)
Then we have music as a means of characterization.
Characters are judged or valued in relation to their attitude
towards, or reaction to music.

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173
Music is a vehicle for emotion. From that clue,
George Eliot feels free to delineate a character's degree
of em 0 t i vi t y. We know for e xamp1e t hat 11 r~ rea san b0 n i s not
fond of the piano" (151), and this attitude further accentuates
the impassiveness of his personage
Dorothea's impression of
the g~eat organ at Freiberg is : "it made me sob" (152), and
we can infer from that reaction that she is highly emotive.
For George Eliot, to be sensitive to music is a positive
qua l i t yv f o r lithe possession of (his) unique "p i e ce of mu s i c "
was a proof that Mr Pullet's character was not of that nullity
which might otherwise have been attributed to it ll (153), and
the evidence shows itself in the shape of a music box.
Because love, beauty and romance are described in
terms of music, reciprocally, imagery drawn from music expres-
ses love, beauty and romance.
Of the first, that is, love, we have this passage
from The M~ll 0» the Flo~~ :
Surely the only courtship unshaken by doubts and fears
must be that in which the lovers can ~;»g togethe~. The
sense of mutual 6~tne~~ that ~p~ing~ 6~om the two deep
»ote~ 6ul6~ll~»g expectatio» ju~t at the ~ight mome»t
between the notes of the silvery soprano, from the pe~6ect
acco~d of descending thirds and fifths, from the p~econ­
ce~ted lO\\J~fl9 eh as e of a fugue, is likely enough to super-
sede any immediate demand for less impassioned 6o~m~ 06
a 9~ e eIII e ut.,
The con t r a 1tow ill not car e t 0 cat e chi ze the
bass; the tenor will foresee no embarrassing dearth of

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1 7 4
remark in evenings spent with the lovely soprano.
In
the provinces, too, where music was so scarce in that
remote time, how could the musical people avoid falling
in love with each other? Even political principle must
have been tempted to fraternize in a demoralizing way
with a reforming violoncello.
In this case, the linnet-
throated soprano, and the full-toned bass, singing,
With three delight is ever new,
With three is life incessant bliss,
believed what they sang all the more be~au~e they sang it
(154).
Music, thus is the language of love. We can appreciate
in this passage, the clever interplay of words. The song here
a 1m0 s t rep res e nt.' the sex ua 1 act.
Still
in the light of love (not necessarily sexual)
being expressed in terms of music, here is Will Ladislaw thin-
king of Dorothea :
It would be a unique delight to wait and watch for the
melodious fraqments in which her heart and soul came
.forth so directly and ingeniously. The
-Eolian harp again
came into his mind (155).
Love is music.
Beauty is music too. We are tol-d that Minah's"little
laugh might have entered into a song" (156).
I dare say

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175
this denotes the beauty of her laugh. Lydgate defines beauty
in the same terms. Of Rosamond, he thinks
She is grace itself; she is perfectly lovely and
accomplished. That is what a woman ought to be : she
ought to produce the effect of exquisite music (157).
And finally romance is nothing but music. As an
example, let us consider this unique passage.which is music
down to its very movement. Stephen and Maggie have just gone
into the boat and they are slowly "borne along by the tide" :
They glided rapidly along, Stephen rowing, helped by the
backward-flowing tide, past the Tofton trees and houses-
on between the silent sunny fields and pastures, which
seemed filled with a natural joy that had no reproach for
theirs. The breath of the young, unwearied day, the deli-
cious rhytmic dip of the oars, the fragmentary song of a
passing bird heard now and then as if it were only the
overflowing of brim-full gladness, the sweet solitude
of a twofold consciousness that was mingled into one by
that grave untiring gaze which need to be averted - what
else could there be in their minds for the first hour?
Some low, subdued, languid exclamation of love came from
Stephen from time to time as he went on rowing idly,
half automatically; otherwise, they spoke no word, for
what could words have been but an inlet to thought? And
thought did not belong to that enchanted haze in which
they were enveloped; it belonged to the past and the
future that lay outside the haze.

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176
The horizontal process is the method
Eliot uses In
music imager~ most economically. Maggie's moral development
- from her temptation to her downfall, via her inner conflict -
is entirely described and defined in terms of music imagery.
But to render this effective, George Eliot clusters Maggie
with musical associations. Her character is thoroughly defined
in terms of music, including her weak points and her virtues.
Already, in her childhood, she shows a wild interest
in music. Her sensitiveness to music is awakened ~n her early
years. Thus, ate hri s t mas,
There had been singing under the windows after midnight -
supernatural singing, Maggie always felt in spite of
Tom's contemptuous insistence that the singers were old
Patch, the parish clerk, and the rest of the church choir
she trembled with awe when their caro1ing broke in upon
her dreams and the image of men in fustian clothes was
always thrust away by the vision of angels resting on
the parted cloud. The midnight chant had helped as usual
to lift the morning above the level of common days (158).
And at Uncle Pullet's, as she listened to the music box;
Perhaps the suspense did heighten Maggie's enjoyment
when the fairy tune began; for the first time, she quite
forgot that she had a load on her mind - that Tom was
angry with her; and by the time 'Hush, ye pretty warbling
ch 0 i I' I
had bee n p1aye cl, her' fa ce wo re t hat bI' i 9ht 100 k 0 f
happiness, while she sat immovable with her hands clasped,
which sometimes comforted her mother with the sense that

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177
Maggie could look pretty now and then, in spite of
het' brown skin. But when the magic music ceased, she
jumped up, and running towards Tom, put her arm round
his neck and said, "Oh, Tom, isn't it pretty?" (159).
This overflowing of affection roused by music is
to be found still in the older Maggie. Then, much later,
as she reads from a back about religion, "A strange thrill
of awe passed through Maggie while she read, as if she had
been wakened in the night by a strain of solemn music" (160).
Her feeling towards music is shared by Philip
Wakem :
"The greatest of painters only once painted a mysteriously
divine child; he couldn't have told how he did it, and
we can't tell why we feel
it to be divine.
I think there
are stores laid up in our human nature that our understan-
dings can make no complete inventory of. Certain strains
of music affect me so strangely; I can never hear them
without their changing my whole attitude of mind for a
time, and if the effect would last, I might be capable
of heroisms".
"Ah ! I know what you mean about music - I feel
so", said
Maggie, clasping her hands with her old impetuosity.
"At least", she added in a saddened tone, "I used to feel
so when I had any music;
I never ha~e any now except
the organ at church'
(161).
(here
appreciate Eliot's technique quietly assembling two forms

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178
of art and drawing an analogy between both). Later, Stephen
ask s t~ ag9i e :
11 W
0 u1d nit
you rea 11Y 1 i ke t 0 be a t e nth muse, the n , t1 a ggi e ? 11
said Philip, looking up in her face as we look at a first
parting in the clouds that promise
us a bright heaven
once more.
11 Not
a tal 1 I, S aid ~1 a gg i e, 1a ugh i ng.
11 The
muse s were unc0 m-
fortable goddeesses, I think - obliged always to carry
rolls and musical instruments about with them.
If I carried
a harp in this climate, you know, I must have a green-
baise cover for it, and I should be sure to leave it
behind me by mistake" (162).
It 1s very natural
that her inner conflict between
breaking off with Philip and not doing so is rendered through
music imagery:
Maggie shook her head slowly, and was silent under conflic-
ting thoughts.
It seemed to her inclination that to see
Philip now and then, and keep up the bond of frienship
with him, was something not only innocent, but good; per-
haps she might really help him to find contentment as
she had found it. The voice that said this made sweet music
to Maggie, but athwart it there came an urgent monotonous
warning from another voice which she had been learning to
obey: the warning that such interviews implied secrecy,
implied doing something she would dread to be discovered
in, something that, if discovered, must cause anger and
pain and that the admission of anything so near doubleness

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179
would act as a spiritual blight. Yet the music would
swell out again, like chimes borne onward by a recurrent
breeze, persuading her that the wrong lay all in the faults
and weaknesses of others (163).
Now that Maggie's character is firmly established
in terms of music, the action properly speaking can start,
that is Maggie's moral voyage. But then again, before every-
thing, Lucy gives a hint which has a crucial importance to the
turn Maggie's story takes. Lucy says
IIThere is one pleasure I know, Maggie, that your deepest
dismalness will never resist. That is mu s i c " (164).
From ~hat moment onward, we can notice a gradually
increasing sensitivity to music in Maggie.
We first have small but significant prolepti~signs :
IIpresently the rhytmic movement of the oars attracted her, and
she thought she should like to learn how to row ll (165), then
we are told that lithe music was vibrating her ... - Purcell's
music, with its wild passion and fancy ... - She was in her
brighter aerial world a qa i n" (166). She confides to Lucy that
III think I should have no other mortal wants if I could always
have plenty of music.
It seems to infuse strength into my
limbs and ideas into my brain. Life seems to go on without
effort when I am filled with music. At other times one is
conscious of c a r r y i nq a we i qh t " (167). One could almost say
that music is her opiate. However, she reminds Philip of his

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1UO
prophecy and thus gives the reason for her hunger of music
"You used to say I should feel
the effect of my starved' life,
as you called it, and I do.
I am too eager in my enjoyment
of music and all
luxuries, now they are come to me" (168).
Eliot comments:
When Maggie went up to her bedroom that night, it appeared
that
her eyes and cheeks had an almost feverish bril-
lancy
Had anything remarkable happened?
Nothing that you are not likely to consider in the highest
.degreee unimportant. She had been hearing some fine music
sung by a fine bass voice ... and she was conscious of
having been looked at a great deal
in rather a furtive
manner
with a glance that seemed somehow to have
caught the vibratory influence of the voice. Such things
could have had no perceptible effect on a thoroughly well-
educated young lady with a perfectly balanced mind who had
had all the advantages of fortune, training, and refined
society
In poor Maggie·s highly-strung, hungry nature - just come
away from a third-rate schoolroom,with all its jarring
sounds and petty round of tasks - these apparently trivial
causes had the effect of rousing and exalting her imagi-
nation in a way that was mysterious to herself (169).
Now that the reader is as much conditioned as Maggie
herself, Stephen makes a symbolic entry tnto the scene as he
"\\., a 1ksin VJ i t h a r 0 11 0 f music i n his hand" (1 70 ).
Fur the r
music associations are made now and then on her character: as
she learns about Ph i l i p I s next arrival, she "gave a little start

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181
it seemed hardly more than a vibration that passed from head
to foot in an instant" (171), later we are told that Maggie,
"who had little more power of concealing the impressions made
upon her than if she had been constructed of musical strings,
felt her eyes getting larger with tears" (172).
If we consider Stephen's entry as the first act
of Maggie's tragedy, then we have, in the second, her inner
conflict. Stephen has become music incarnate, and Maggie's
attempts to resist music are in fact her attempts to resist
Stephen. The metaphor is clear.here. Let us, rather, refer
to the passage:
Maggie always tried in vain to go on with her work when
music began. She tried harder than ever today, for the
thought that Stephen knew how much she cared for his singing
was one that no longer roused a merely playful resistance,
and she knew, too, that it was his habit always to stand
so that he could look at her. But it was of no use; she
soon threw her work down, and all
her intentions were lost
in the vague state of emotion produced by the inspiriting
duet - emotion that seemed to make her at once strong
and weak: strong for all enjoyment, weak for all
resistance.
When the strain passed into the minor, she half started
from her seat with the sudden thrill of that change. Poor
Maggie
She looked very beautiful when her soul was being
played on in this way by the inexorable power of sound.
You might have seen the slightest perceptible quivering
through her whole frame as she leaned a little forward,

---

1B2
clasping her hands as if to steady herself, while her
eyes dilated and brightened into that wide-open, childish
expression of wondering delight which always came back
i n her ha ppie s t m0 men t s (1 72 ) .
When we think back of her reaction to the music box
at Uncle Pullet's, we can then fully value her efforts and
endurance here.
Lastly, in the third and final
act, we have Maggie yielding
to the song, that is, to Stephen :
Stephen rolled out with saucy energy,
Shall
I, wasting in despair,
Die because a woman's fair?
and seemed to make all the air in the room alive with
a new influence ( ... ) ; and Maggie, in spite of her
resistance to the spirit of the song and to the singer,
was taken hold of and shaken by the invisible influence,
was borne along by a wave too strong for her (173)
It is in chapter "13" (significantly enough) that they are
literally "borne along by the tide".
We demonstrated
in the first part of
this study that George Eliot, unlike her contemporaries, wrote
from the head. But if her heart ever influenced her hand, for
once even, it must have been in her treatment of music imagery.

---

Notes on 'Imagery'
-----------
I.
S.H.
Burton.
The er i tic ism or Prose :
'Imagery'
(longueau Group Ltd : London,
1973)
P.
43
2.
Ibid,
P.
43
3. Tho Mill VII,
I p.
507
4 . Adam Bede ch 15 P.
158
5.
Ibid, ch 19 P.
205
6.
Ibid, ch 20 P. 215
7. Middlemarch ch 15 P.
170
8.
Ibid, Finale P.
890
9.
Ibid,
ch 61- P.
665
10. Ibid, ch 48 P. 523
11.
Ibid, ch 17 P.
204
12.
Ibid, ch 18 p.
210
13.
Ibid,
ch 26 P. 296
14.
Ibid, ch 31 P. 328
15.
Ibid, ch 58 P.
641
16.
Ibid, ch 65 P.
718
17.
Ibid,
ch 66 P. 720
18. The Mill I, 6, P. 57
19.
Ibid VII,
5, P.P. 544,545
20. Adam Bede ch 22, P. 241
21.
Ibid, ch 27 P. 281-282
22.
Ibid,
ch 20 P.
215
23.
Ibid, ch 55 P. 503
24.
Ibid,
ch 50 P.
465
25.
Ibid, ch 12 P. 134
26.
Ibid,
ch 51 p.
474

---

27. Middlemarch ch 36 P.
380
28. The Mill VI,
6 P.
420
29.
Ibid Ill,
7 P.
260
30. Adam Bede ch 4 p.
62
31.
Ibid, ch 37 P.
366
32.
Ibid, ch 37 p.
367
33. Daniel Deronda ch 17 P.
228
34. The Mill, V,
4, P.
359
35. Middlemarch ch 8 P.
95
36. Adam Bede ch IS, PP.
154-155
37.
Ibid ch 32 P.
334
38. The Mill l~, 2, P.
164
39.
Ibid,III,
5 P.
240
40.
Ibid,
Ill,
9 P.
279
41. Middlemarch,
ch 37, P 394
42.
Ibid, ch 37 P.
393
43.
Ibid,
ch 37 P.
394
44.
Ibid, ch 37 P.
403
45. Daniel Deronda ch 3 P.
50
46.
Ibid, ch 3 P. 53
47.
Ibid,
ch 64 p.
831
48.
Ibid, ch 16 P.
209
49. The Mill.
111,7 P.
260
50. Middlemarch ch 10, P.I09
SI. The Mill 11,
I P.
149
52.
lbid, 11,
4 , P.
181
53. Middlemarch ch 35 P.
365

---

54. rrhe Mill I,
9
55.
lbid,
I
, 5 P.P. 45,46
56. Adam Bede ch 19, P.
205
57.
Ibid, ch 7 P.
91
58. Ibid, ch 45 P. 424
59.
Ibid, ch 37 P.
370
60. Daniel Deronda ch 17 P.
228
61. Adam Bede ch 31 P.
319
62.
Ibid, ch 35 P. 349
63.
Ibid, ch 27 P.
282
64. The Mill VII, 2 P.
523
65.
Ibid, VII, 5 P. 546
66. Daniel Deronda ch 65 P. 837
67.
Ibid, ch 65 P. 839
68.
Ibid, ch 69 P.P. 877-8 a
69.
Ibid, ch 69 P. 879
70. Middlewarch. ch I P.
32
7r.
Ibid, ch 8 P.
92
72.
Ibid, ch 8 P.
93
73.
Ibid, ch 10 P.II2
74.
Ibid, ch 29 P 319
75.
Ibid, ch 20 P.
234
76.
Ibid, ch 20 P. 234
77.
Ibid, ch 37 P. 397-8
78.
Ibid, ch 37 P. 398
79.
Ibid, ch 39 P 427
80.
Ibid, ch 83 P.868
8r.
Ibid, ch 82 P. 862
82. Barbara Hardy Critical Essays on Gco~e Eliot
- - - - - - - - - - - .__._------~-----~ ----_. .-

---

82.
Idea and Image lithe world 9 geo1:'ge Eliot'
(Ro1..ltledge and Kegan PClul Lt.d : London 1970)
P.P. 186-7
83. Middlemarch ch 12 P.
144
84. Ibid, ch 81 P.
85
8
85. Daniel Deronda ch 14 P.P.
185-186
86.
Ibid,
ch 69 P.P.
875-6
87.
Ibid, ch 23 p.
301
88.
Ibid,
ch 7 P.
97
89.
Ibid, ch 28 P.
361
90.
Ibid, ch 29 P.
372
9r.
Ibid ch 31 P.
404
92.
Ibid, ch 36 P. 502
93.
Ibid,ch 44 P. 608
94.
Ibid, ch 31 p.
405
95.
Ibid,
ch 36
96.
Ibid, ch 22 P.
284
97.
Ibid, ch SI P. 688
98.
Ibid,
ch 52 p. 716
99.
Ibid, ch 61 P.P.
800-1
100.
Ibid, ch 37 P.P. 516-7
IOr.
Ibid,
ch 37 P. 525
102. Adam Bede ch 22 D .
~
250
103 Ibid ch 27 P. 287
104. The Mill IV, 3,
~
_
.
P.
308
105. Middlcmarch ch 20 P. 234
106.
Ibid, ch 24 P. 274
107.
Ibid, ch 54 P. 581
108.
Ibid,
ch 22 P. 252

---

109.
Ibid ch 19 P.
223
110.
Ibid, ch 38 P.
415
Ill.
Ibid, ch 82 P.
860
112. The Mill Ill,
9 P.
281
113 Adam Bede ch 5 P.
159
114. Ibid, ch 2 P.
42
115.
Ibid, ch 5 P.P.
74-5
116. The Mill I,
3 P.
30
117. Adam Bede ch 18 P.P.
188-9
118.
Ibid ch 18 P. 187
119. The Mill V,
I, P.
316
120. Middlemarch ch 34 P.
360
121.. The Mill I, 12 P. 130
122.
Ibid Ill,
I p.
209
123.
Ibid,
Ill,
I P.
209
124.
Ibid, VII,
3 p.
526
125. Middlemarch ch 20 P.
226
126 Adam Bede ch 4 P.
49
127 Ibid, ch
4 P.P.
48
128 Ibid, ch 15 P. 153
129 The Mill,
I
3, P.
24
130 Ibid, V,
2, p.
325
131 Ibid, VI,
2 P. 400
132 Ibid, V,
4,
P.
349
133 Middlemarch ch 12 P. 144
134 1bid ch 12 P. 140
135 Ibid ch 11 P. 129
136 1bid ch 63 P. 694

---

137. Middlemarcb ch 12 P.
140
138. The Mill VI,
6 P.
420
139.
Ibid V,
I P.
317
140. Adam Bede ch I P.P.
18,24
141.
Ibid,
ch 38 P.
373
142.
Ibid,
ch 30 P. 463
143.
Ibid, ch 3 P.
47-48
144.
Ibid,
ch 53P.
490
145.
Ibid, ch 3 P.
46
146.
Ibid, ch 22 P.
282
147. The Mill VI, 7 P.P.
436,
437
148.
Ibid, VI,
7 P. 435
149.
Ibid, VI, 1"3 P.
482
ISO, Daniel Deronda ch 47 P.
512
-"
151, Middlemarch ch 7 P.
89
152. Ibid, ch 7 P.
90
153. The Mill I, 9 P.
103
154.
Ibid, VI,
I P.P.
383-4
155. Middlemarch ch 21 P.
24 I
156. Daniel Deronda ch 37 P. 521
157. Middlemarch ch 11 P. 120
158 The Mill 11, 2 P. 487
159.
Ibid I,
9 P.P. 103-4
160. Ibid,
IV,
3 P.
305
161,
Ibid, V,
I P.
320
162.
Ibid, V,
4 P.
348
163.
Ibid, V,
I P.P.
318,
319

---

164.
Ibid, VI,2 P.
391
165.
Ibid, VI,3 P.
399
166.
Ibid, VI,
3 P. 402
167.
Ibid, VI, 3 P.
403
168.
Ibid, VI,
7 P.
433
169. Ibid, VI, 3 P.P. 401-2
170. Ibid, VI,
6, p.
423
I7I.
Ibid, VI, G,
P.
425
172. Ibid, VI, 7 , P.
429
173.
Ibid, VI, 7, P.P. 435-6
174.
Ibid, VI, 7 , P.
437

---

1B3
C H APT E R
IV
=================
SYMBOLISM
==:::======
I - DEFINITION -
Symbolism allows an author to link the limited
world of his characters to the one of the great systems of
values, so that the reader is able to compare what happens
in the novel with its original
parallel. Specific actions
in the story illustrate general
patterns of behaviour, and
the private character acquires a new importance when he is
seen in the light of his symbolic counterpart.
Novelists
have gone to the Bible and to classical mythology as sources
of myth, creating characters who are closely identifiable
with biblical or mythological figures and events, and Eliot
is one of these novelists.
If Eliot1s use of classical mythology is limited
to simple, thou~h edifying, allusions, it is a different
thing with the Bible which she extensively and finely exploits
for the different purposes of her work. She enriches her
novels
with actions, ideas, and especially scenes, invested
with meanings which are easily associated in our mind with
.
actions, ideas, and scenes we find in the Bible. The Bible
however does not constitute the sole kind of symbolism she
makes use of in her novels.

---

1B4
Indeed she also resorts to another category of symbolism,
that of her own creation, and which is thence specific to
her. But before we make any attempt to study the latter,
we will first examine her use of the conventional symbol.
11 - CONVENTIONAL SYMBOL
ELIOT AND THE BIBLE -
Adam BEVE is the richest in the presentation of
scenes inspired by the Bible.And the biblical parallel
serves either to give solemnity to the scene, or to cast
an ironic light on it. Sympathy is a feeling which George
Eliot wanted all men to be governed by. She was convinced
that every man was accessible to it, and the main purpose
of her work was to stir the numbest heart, to vibrate in
all men the fibre of sympathy, no matter how stiff, no matter
how tough. Adam BEVE is thus a fervent appeal to sympathy
among men.
In Adam BEVE we come to judge a character from
his attitude toward his neighbour's suffering. We saw how
their respective reactions to the news of Thias Bede1s
death served as a means of contrasting the moral attitudes
of Hetty and Dinah ; we also witnessed with some emotion,
the deep concern of the whole community of Hayslope at
Hetty's tragedy, and there are many other examples. What
I want to show is that the sense of solidarity, of commu-
nion, in short, of sympathy, is made emphatic at every oppor-
tunity and in every aspect, that is, physical, spiritual,
moral. The most articulate example of this is to be found
towards the end of the book. Adam Bede has been informed of
Hetty's crime and treachery.
In his sorrow, he grows hard

---

1B5
and un f or q i vi nq . Ba r t l e
Massey, the schoolteacher and
Mr Irwine the preacher, both friends of him, apply themselves
to awaken him to the fact of Hetty's own suffering and misery.
The rendering of this gradual relenting is remarkable.
Because the sight of Hetty is unbearable to him, he feels
some apprehension to go and witness Hetty's trial. As Massey
relates the
trial
to him, "Adam's heart beat so violently
he was unable to speak - he could only return the pressure
of his friend's hand" (1). Massey and himself feel deeply
about Hetty and the communication here is physical. Then
Bartle Massey invites him to share some bread and wine, and
it is significant that .this is offered by Mr Irwine -the
pr.i est.
"And nO!;J'I (.Barthe Massey) said, rising again, "l must see to
your having a bit of the loaf, and some of that wine Mr
Irwine sent this morning. He'll be angry with me if you
don I t ha ve it. Co me, now 11 , • hew en ton, br i ngin g f 0 rw a r d the
bottle and the loaf and pouring some wine into a cup, "l
must have a bit and sup myself. Drink a drop with me, my
lad - drink with me" (2).
But Adam at this stage is not ready to p?rform the Holy
Communion. He has still too much bitterness in him. So he
refuses to eat and to drink. Barthe Massey expresses his
regret and compassion in terms of figures:
"I'd have given
up figures for ever only to have had some good news to bring
to y cu , my poor lad" (3). And when we think that he is a
school-teacher, we then fully value the extent of his sacri-
fice and appreciate his deep concern.
In fact, the whole

---

1B6
chapter is filled wi t h communion associations: "drink a
drop with me", "everybody in court felt for him (Mr Poyser) -
it was so like one sob, the sound they made where he came
down again", "the blow falls heavily on him as well as you",
"drink some wine nO\\'J, and show me you want to bear it like
a man", Here Eliot says that "Bartle had made the right
sort of appeal, Adam, with an air of quiet obedience, took
up the cup and drunk a little". This marks the second phase
of the communion. Adam here drinks to communicate symboli-
cally with Mr Poyser. When Adam finally resolves to go and
see Hetty into court, it is as if he had come out of his
depression a new man, thoroughly regenerated:
"Mr Massey", he said at last, pushing the hair off his
f o r e he a'd , "I'll go back with you.
1 '11 go into court.
It's cowardly of me to keep away.
1 '11 stand by her-
I'll own her - for all she's been deceitful. They oU1htn't
to cast her off - her own flesh and blood. We hand folks
over God's mercy, and show none ourselves.
I used to be
hard sometime:
I'll never be hard again.
I'll go, Mr
Massey - I'll go with you".
After his decision to go and stand by Hetty, Bartle and him-
self drink and eat some more bread and wine as though to
baptise the wiser man he has become:
"Take a bit, then, and another sup, Adam, for the love
of me".
And Eliot comments
"Nerved by an active resolution, Adam took a morsel of
bread and drank some wi ne . He was haggard and unshaven,
as he had been yesterday, but he stood upright again,

---

1B7
and looked more like the Adam of former days (4).
And the chapter closes on this full performance of the Holy
Communion and the contrast be twe e n inner and outer Adam.
Still in the light of reunion, reconciliation and sym-
pathy, we have in chapter 47 (the Last Moment), the mock
marriage of Adam and Hetty under the direction of Dinah.
Hetty is judged and sentenced to death the very day she and
Adam should have been joined in matrimony by Mr Irwine.
In the evening, Adam comes to visit Hetty in prison where
Dinah is trying to give her some comfort and make her repent.
The marriage is ironica.lly performed in terms of forgiveness.
When their sad eyes met - when Hetty and Adam looked at
ea~h other - she felt the change in him too, and it seemed
to strike her with fresh fear.
It was the first time she
had seen any being whose face seemed to reflect the change
in herself: Adam was a new image of the dreadful past and
the dreadful present. She trembled more as she looked at
him.
"Speak to him Hetty", Dinah said
"Tell him what is in your heart"
Hetty obeyed. like a little child.
"Ad am ... 1 1 01 very sorry
I behaved very wrong to you
... will you forgive me
before I die?
Adam answered with a half-sob.
"Yes, I forgive thee Hetty.
I t or qa ve thee long ago".
It had
eemed to Adam as if his brain would burst with the

---

1B8
anguish of meeting Hetty's eyes in the first moments, but
the sound of her voice uttering, these penitent words tou-
ched a chord which had been less strained. There was a senSE
of relief from what was becoming unbearable, and the rare
tears came - they had never come before, since he had hung
on Seth's neck in the beginning of his sorrow.
Hetty made an involuntary movement towards him,
some of the love that she had once lived in the midst of
-
was come near her again. She kept hold of Dinash's hand,
but she went up to Adam and said timidly, IIWill you kiss
me again, Adam, for all
I've been so wicked ?II.
Adam took the blanched wasted hand she put out to him, and
they 9av~ each other the solemn unspeakable kiss of a life-
long parting (5).
This is a beautifully pathetic scene in which Dinah
the preacher reconciles, spiritually unites, Adam Bede and
Hetty Sorrel before God.
The last emphatic expression of communion.between
men appears near the end of the novel, in liThe Harvest Sup-
peril (ch. 53) which in fact is the Last Supper. It i s the
ultimate symbol of man's reconciliation with himself, with
his fellow men and with Nature. Before the supper, we natu-
rally have something similar to the Epiphany something reve-
latory of God's presence among men:

---

189
As Adam was going homeward, on Wednesday evening,
on the six o'clock sunlight s he saw in the distance the
last load of barely winding its way towards the yard - gate
of the Hall Farm, and heard the chant of "Har ve s t Blome ll !
rising and sinking like a wave. Fainter and fainter, and
more musical through the growing distance, the falling dying
sound still reached him, as he neared the Willow Brook.
The low westering sun shone right on the shoulders of the
old Binton Hills, turning the unconscious sheep into ~right
..
spots of light; shone on the windows of the cottage too~
and made them a-flame with a glory beyound that of amber
or amethyst.
It was enough to make Adam feel
that he was
in a great temple, and that the distant chant was a sacred
song,As to the supper proper,
rt·w~s a goodly sight - that table, with Martin
Poyser1s round good - humoured face and large person at
I
the head of it, helping his servants to the fragrant roast
beef and pleased when the empty plates came again.Martin.
though usually blest with a good apoetite! really forgot
·to finish his own beef to -night - It was so pleasant to
him to look on in the intervals of carving and see how
the others enjoyed their supper (6).
But we do not have only symbolic scenes, we also
encounter characters who are obvious symbolic figures.
Mr Irwine, for example, is a Christ-figure. The sacrifice

---

1s 0
of his life lies in the fact that he chooses not to marry,
in order to meet the material needs of his sisters and
mother, for his income is limited. And Eliot endeavours
to make more of a self-sacrifice which she means to take
greater proportions in our estimation, than we would objec-
tive1y allow, and she comments:
IITo speak paradoxically, the existence of insignificant
people has very important consequences in the world.
It can
be shown to affect the price of bread and rate of wage~, to
call forth many evil tempers from the selfish and many
heroisms
from the sympathic, and, on other ways, to play
no small
part in the tragedy of life. And if that handsome,
generous - blooded clergyman, the Rev.
Ado1phus Irwine, had
not had these two hopelessly maiden sisters, his lot would
have been shaped quite differently: he would very likely
have taken a comely wife in his youth, and now, where his
hair was getting grey under the powder, would have had tall
sons and blooming daughters - such professions, in short,
I
as men commonly think will repay them for all the labour
they take with all his three livings no more than seven hun-
dred a-year, ~nd seeing no way of keeping his splendid mother
and his sickly sister, not to reckon a second sister, who
was usually spoken of without any adjective, in such lady
like ease as became their birth and habits, and at the same
t i me pro v i din g for a of a mi 1y 0 f his o.w n- her e ma i ne d, you see,
. at the age of eight-and-forty, a bachelor, not making any
merit of that renunciation, but saying laughingly if any
one alluded to it, that he made it an excuse for many indul-

---

191
gences which a wife would never have allowed him. And
perhaps he was the only person in the world who did not
think his sisters uninteresting" and superfluous; for his was
one of those large-hearted, sweet-blooded natures that
never know a narrow or a grudging thought; ... but ... of
a sufficiently subtle moral fibre to have an unwearying
tenderness for obscure and monotonous suffering (7).
Throughout the novel, Mr Irwine has a beneficient
'-
moral influence over the other characters. He is trust-
worthy. Anyone in distress comes to him.
In that too, he
stands for the Messiah. He is the way, the truth and the
life. He who comes to him is saved. Arthur refuses to go
to him in due time and he experiences the catastrophic con-
sequences. To Irwine, Adam humbly and candidly confesses:
"I come to you, sir, as the gentleman I look up to most of
anybody" (8). Then he tells Irwine that Hetty has run away.
And much to his surprise (but not to ours) Irwine tells him
the "how" and "why" of Hetty's prolonged absence:
("Seek,
and you shall find").
In Irwine, Adam has found more than
the truth, he has found the warmth of a friend's helping
hand.
In her way, Hetty parodies Caen pursued by the vi-
sion of God's eye after the murder of his brother Abel. And
as Hetty unfolds her experience to Dinah, we gradually asso-
ciate her with Caen who symbolizes the first stage of the
work of the Nemesis, that which is performed between the

---

192
culprit and his own conscience.
In the following extract,
we can observe how Hetty, obssessed by her crime and perse-
cuted by her conscience, comes to amplify and distort the
vis ion 0 f the wo r 1d a r 0 un d her. She !.l e- C-!.l the 11eye 11 0 f jus tic e
everywhere, and she hopelessly, pathetically, keeps moving
on :
III came to a place where there was lots of chips and
turf, and I sat down on the trunk of a tree to think
what I should do. And all of a sudden I saw a hole under
the nut-tree, like a little grave. And it darted into me
like lightning - lid lay the baby there and cover it
with the grass and the chips.
I couldn't kill
it any
other way.
And I'd done it in a minute
and, oh, it
~
cried so, Dinah
I c.ou.€-dn't
cover it q u.i t e up ':'-1
thought perhaps somebody'ud come and take care of it,
and then it wouldn't die. And I made- ha!.lte out of the
wood, but I c.ou.€-d
he-an it c.nuing at.€-
the whi.€-e
; and
when I got out into the fields,
it was as if I was
held fast - I couldn't go away, for all
I wanted so
to go. And I sat against the haystack to watch if any-
bodylud come.
I was very hungry, ani I'd only a bit
of bread left, but I couldn't go away. And after ever
such a while - hours and hours - the man came - him in
a smock-frock, and he looked at me so, I wa!.l 6nightened,
aHd I ma d e has t:». and went OH.
I thought he was going to
the wood and would perhaps find the baby. And I went
n--<·9Itt 011,
t i 1"1
I came to a vi 11 age, along 'vJay off f r om
)\\ The first italic is [lio's.
The rest is mine

---

19:)
the wood, and I was very sick, and faint, and hungry.
I got something to eat there, and bought a loaf. But
I
wa~ 6~ighte~ed to ~tay. I hea~d the baby ~~ying, and
thought the othe~ 601k~ hea~d it too - and I wen~ on.
But I was so tired, and it was getting towards dark.
And at last, by the roadside there was a barn -ever
such a way off any house - like the barn in Abbot's
Close, and I thought I could go in there and hide my-
~el6
among the hay and straw and nobody'ud be likely
to come.
I went on, and it was half full
oltrusses of
straw, and there was some hay too. And I made myself
a bed, ever so far behind, whe~e nobody ~ould 6ind me
and I was sot ire d and we a k,
I went to s 1ee p ... But 0 h ,
the ba6y'~ ~~ying kept Waking me, and I thought that
man a~ looked at me ~o wa~ ~ome and laying hold 06 me.
But I must have slept a long while at last, though I
didnlt know, for when I got up and went out of the barn,
I didn't know whether it was night or morning.
But it
was morning, for it kept getting lighter, and I turned
back the way lid come.
I couldn't help it
Dinah
it wa~ the baby'~ c~ying made me go and yet I wa~
6~ightened to death.
I
thought that man in the ~mo~h­
6~ock'ud ~ee me and know I put the baby the~e. But I
went on,
for all that.
lid left off thinking about
goi n9 home - it had gone out 0 I my mi nd.
I ~aw noth-tl1g
but t.h a; pEace'. OH the wood whc.hc I'd ou.ni.e.d :the baby ...
I
~ e e. it noW.
011 V{ 11 aIt ! .6 haiR. I
cr.Lf. a y~ ~ C'c. ;..-t ? 11 (9).

---

1 9 4
The verdict (ch. 43) or Hetty's judgment is full
of apocalyptic connotations:~The place of the trial was a
grand old hall, now de~t~oyed by 6i~e. The midday light
that fell
on the close pavement of human head~ was shed
through a line of high pointed window~, variegated with
the 'mellow tints of old painted glass. Grim, dusty armour
hung on high relief in front of the da~~ oaken gallery at
the farther end, and under the broad arch of the great
millioned window opposite was spread a curtain of old tapes-
try covered with dim melan~holy 6igu~e~,
like a dozing in-
H
distinct d~eam, of the past (10).
Further down in the same chapter, Hetty is assimilated to
a demon.
If biblical reference is aboundant and more articu-
late in Adam Bede, it is not lacking in the other novels.
In The Mill on the Flo~~
whose main theme is forgiveness
and reconciliation, we witness the violation of one of the
Ten Commandments. It is a case of a father - Mr Tulliver -
instructing his son - Tom - and making him swear on the
Bible that he will never forgive his worst enemy - lawyer
Wakem -
The son promises and writes the pledge in the
Bible. A capital blasphemy. This is certainly audacious of
George Eliot, but we must also admit, knowing our author,
that this outrage to the Bible is an effective way of cou-
veying the extent of Mr Tulliver's hatred for Wakem.
I will
quote the passage relating that scene whose high immorality
is balanced by Maggie's reprobation, and in which we are
clearly expected to adopt Maggie's attitude.

---

195
"And you mind this, Tom - you never forgive him, neither,
if you mean to be my son. There'll maybe come a time when
you make him feel
- it'll never come to me. I'n got my head
under the yoke. Now write, write it i' the Bible".
"Oh father, what? sa-id Maggie, sinking down by his
knee, pale and trembling." It's wicked to curse and bear
malice".
"It isn't wicked, I tell you", said her father fiercely.
"It's wicked as the raskills should prosper - it's the devil's
doing. Do as I tell you, Tom. Write".
"What am I to write, Father ?" said Tom with gloomy
submission.
"Write as your father, Edward Tulliver, took service
under John Wakem, the man as had helped to ruin him, because
I'd promised my wife to make her what amends I could for her
trouble, and because I wanted to die on th'old place where
I was born and my father was born. Put that i'the right
words - you know how - and then write, as
I don't forgive
Wakem, for all
that; and for all
I'll serve him honest.
I wish evil may befall him. Write t ha t :".
There was a dead silence as Tom's pen moved along the paper
Mrs Tulliver looked scared, and Maggie trembled like a
leaf.
"Now let me hear what you've wrote", said Mr Tu l l i ve r ,
Tom read aloud, slowly.

---

1 9 6
"Now wr i t e , write as you'll
remember what Wakem's done
to your father, and you'll make him and his feel
it, if
ever the day comes. And sign your ·name, Thomas Tu11iver".
"Oh no, father, dear f a t he rv l " said Maggie, almost cho-
ked with fear.
"You shouldn't make Tom write that".
" Be qui et Ma 99 i e ! s aid Tom.
"I .6 haff wr i t e i t I' (11).
This scene is unique in George Eliot's work. No other cha-
racter in any of George Eliot's novels uses such language.
In Middfema~ch, biblical symbolism is immersed in
the whole structure of the book.
It is latent "but obviously
present. Here we do not have scenes, or parables, but simple
imagery endowed with symbolic extension. This use of imagery
is embryonic in Adam Be.de. (cf "The Verdict").
It reaches
fullness of expression in Middfe.ma~ch. We have imagery remi-
niscent of Genesis, Exodus, Epiphany and finally Apoca1yps~.
Because
The main theme in Middfe.ma~ch is that of purpose,
of construction, we naturally have metaphors of shaping and
making, and framing. These ar~ to convey the idea of purpose.
They pivot on notions of pattern or rule, measure or structu-
re. They are all words used in metaphors which, explicitly
or by implication, reveal
the individual directing his des-
tiny by conscious, creative purpose toward the end of abso-
lute human order
we have metaphors of shapelessness with
their antitheses " a kind Providence furnishes the limpest
personality with a little gum
or starch in the form of tra-
dition". Opposed to them a r e the many metaphors of the

---

1 9 7
unorganised, of chaos, mainly of the human mind, which, at
the worst like Mr Brooke's availing nothing perceptible in
the body politic, is a mess. These many metaphors of chaos
as opposed to order are in fact humourously dramatized by
Mr Brooke's IIdocuments ll which need arranging but get mixed
up in pigeon - holes; and Mary Garth's "red fire
which
seemed like D solemn existence calmly independant of petty
passions, the imbecile desires, the straining often worthless
I
I
un ce.r t a i n tie s, whi ch we red ail y m0vi ng her con t empt 11
;
After•.
The gr00~ of metaphors belonging to the Genesis, we
have another group of metaphors which belong t(} the Exodus.
The Exodus is, as we all
know, the emigration of the Hebrews
from Eqyp t j t he I an d where they we r e maintained in slavery.
v
In Middlema~ch, we have figures which oppose freedom to va-
rious forms of restr.aint - burdens, ties, bonds, and so on :
Ladislaw calls himself "Pe qa s us ? ,
and every form of prescri-
bed work "h a r ne s s?' , and Causabon gives the cue, III s hal l let
him bet r i e d by the t est 0 f f r e e d0mtl
;
Tow a r d s the end,
Dorathea observes on the road outside her window " a man ll with
a bundle on his back and a woman carrying her baby" (12), and
still
narer the end
when Lydgate has
~accepted his narrowed
l o t " (there will be no way out, no exodus for him), that is,
the values of his childbride, he thinks IIhe had chosen this
fragile creature, and had taken the burden of her life upon
hiS arms. He must walk as he could, carrying that burden pity-
f u l l y " ("13).
All
these a r e metaphors pushed on to explicit
symbolism. The oppositions in these metaphors of antithesis
are the classic opposition between What Is and What Should Be;

---

190
between the daily pros~ic realities of a community like
~,1 i dJlemarc h (E gyp t ) and the 11 hi g her" rea 1i tie s 0 f t hat U New
Jerusalem" toward wh i c h Dorothea and others are "on the r oad ? •
Everyone and everyth-ing in this novel
is moving on a "way '".
Life is a progress, and in the novel, it takes various shapes,
it is a road, a stream, a channel, an avenue, a way, a jour-
ney, a voyage, a ride, a vista, a chain, a line, a course,
a path, a process. At the end of the novel, Eliot in a reli-
gious s pi ri t , suggests that "Every limit is a beginning
as well as an ending. Everything strains forward. Conscious-
ness is a stream" (14).
In Dorothea's mind, there "was a current into which all
thought and feeling were apt sooner or later to flow the
reaching forward of the whole consciousness toward the ful-
lest truth, the least partial god" (15).
"Ch a r a c t e r too"
we are told, lIis a process" and it is a process which we
r e cog ni z e by a chi (2 ve!'l e nt - "t hen ice tie s 0 fin war d ba 1a nce ~
by which man swims and makes his point or else is carried
he a dl o nq " (16). Eliot's characters think their existence as
lithe stream of life in which the stream of life \\'Ie t r a ce ! ,
but the per son all i f e fin all y f 10 \\-,sin tot he" gu1 f 0 f deat h11 ,
but the qe re-a l stream flows on, through vistas of endlessly
unfolding good, and that good consists of individual achieve-
ments of "the fullest truth, the least partial qood" of Lyd-
gate's individually made points. This is a progressive view
of human history.
Like the restraint - freedom antithesis, these meta-
phors of progress entail metaphors of hindrance to progress.

---

199
The individual
pur po s e is sometimes c o nf u s e d by "a social
life which seemed nothinq but a laryrinth of petty courses,
a wa l l e dv i n ma z e " (17); sometimes by the inadequacy of the
pur p0 S e its elf a sea s a u b0 n, \\'1 ~ o "w a s 10 S t am0 n9 s mall
c 1 0 set s
and winding s t a i r s " (18)
; e>cperience and circumstance over
and over become "yo ke s " wh i c h slow the p r oq r e s s , for there
are t h0 sea 1ways 11 who car r y a \\'l e i ~ h t 0 f t r i a 1s 11 ;
0 ne
may
to i 1 11 Unde r the f e t t e r s 0 f a pr 0 mi s e· lI • 0 r m0 v e, 1 i ke Ly dgat e ,
more haltingly than one had hoped under the burden of a
res po ns i bil i ty .
At the end come the metaphors we wi l l label
the "rnu-
ted" apocalypse. The recurrence of the words up,
h..<.gh an di!
h..<.gh~n used in metaphorical contexts is equalled only, per-
haps, by the use of the word l..<.ght, until one feels a special
significance in "q i vi nq Up" and in all
the faces that be.am,
all
the ideas that 6la~h across the mind, and the things
that are all
the time being "taken" in-that l..<.ght or inthL6
l..<.ght. Fire and light play an important metaphorical
role in
,
this phase where thinqs are glon..<.ou~ly transformed, transfu-
sed or transfigured.
Perception here is thought of as reve-
l at; 0 n , and mi ndsan d sou 1s are a 1\\'l ay s ".1 pen i ngilt 0 the i' n flu x .
Things are incessantly "ma nt f e s t e d " or "ha de mant fe s t :", as
if life were a perpetual
e p l p ha ny t'Re ve l a t i o n " is made endless
i
use of. And wh e n perception is not a "r-e ve l a t t o nv j t t
is a
"d t v i na t i o n" ; characters here wo u l d rather "d i v i ne " than"
"r-e
_ co o nt z e ? •
It t s h ere th
' a t we come upon G E
eorge l
_'
' 0 t ' S
unquestionably favourite word, and

---

200
the centre of her most persistent metaphors.
For the word
"sight" or
"f e e l i no" she almost substitutes the more
pr e q na nt ,
portentous wo r d "vision". Visions are of every possible kind,
from dim to bright to blinding, from testing to guiding.
The simplest sight of the physical detail may be a vision
every insight is of course a vision, usually an inward vision.
When perception is revelation, then it is, secondarily, nou-
rishment, and the frequency of metaphors in which perception
is conceived as spiritual food and drink, and of all
the
metaphors of 6uffl1e.!.:J!.:J,
6~fLLl1g,
aVl.d 6uf6~fme.l1t,
is inevitable.
It is likewise energizing
in various fiqurative ways.
We have illumination, revelation, fulfilment. One
phase remains in this pattern of a classic religious expe-
r i e nee
; t hat i sex pe eta t ion. ~1 eta ph0 r s 0 f e xpe c tat ion are
everywhere; we shall
represent them in their most frequent
form, a phrase so rubbed by usage that it hardly seems meta-
phorical at all.
It is "to look forward", and it appears
on nearly every oage in M~ddfe.ma~ch , a commonplace there too,
yet it is much more than that, it is the clue to the whole
system of metaphor we have attempted to sort out; it is the
clue to the novel, the clue to the mind.
The following passage exhibits a series of metapho-
rical
habit representing George Eliot's selectivity
Mr Casanbon's talk about his qreat beok was 6ufl of new
vistas; and this ,HIlH of n.ov o.La.t.i o s»,
thisHl~pf(;,!l(,
06 «
/I..
11C(('i("({ll('iOdlictioI1
to Stoics and Alexandrians, as pe ool e
wh o had ideas not totally unlike her 0"/11 ~()rothe'lISkePt

---

201
in abeyance for the
time her usual
eagerness for a binding
theo~y which could bring her own life and doctrine into 6t~i~t
~onnc~tion with that amazing past and give the remotest 60u~~e~
of knowledge some bea~ing 011 her actions ... she was looking
60~wa~d to highe~ initiation in ideas, as she was looking
60~wa~d to marriage, and blending her dim conceptions of both
All
her eagerness for acquirement lay within. that 6ull ~u~­
~ent 06 6ympatheti~ motive in which her ideas and im~ulses
were habitually 6wept along. She did not want to deck herself
with knowledge - to wear it loose from the ne~ve6 and blood
that 6ed he~ a~tion
and if she had written a book she must
have done it as Saint Theresa did, under the ~ommand 06 an
autho~ity that ~on6t4ained he~ ~on6~ien~e. But something she
yearned for by which her li6e might be 6illed with action at
once rational and ardent and since the time was gone by for
guiding vi6ion6 and spiritual directors, since prayer heigh-
tened yearning but not instruction, what lamp was there but
knowledge ?" (19).
This one paragraph nearly contains all of them: meta-
phors of unification and its antithesis;that of restraint-
freedom, that of progress, that of apocalypse. This passage
is not in the least exceptionnal. The elements here are sepa-
rated into a series to demonstrate how completely they gra-
dually embody a pseudo-religious philosophy, how absolutely
expressive is a meta0hor, and how systematic it can become.
This is a novel of reli9ious yearning without religious object.

---

? 0 ",
...
L
The uni f i cat ion i t a s p ire s t 0 i s the uni f i cat ion 0 f hum a n kn0 \\'J-
ledge in the service of social ends; the antitheses which ob-
trude it are the antitheses between man as he is and man as
he could be in this world
the hindrances
to life as progress
are manls social, not his moral, flaws;
the purposive dedica-
tion of individuals will overcome
those flaws; we see the
fulfilment of all truly intellectual passions, for the greater
glory of man.
The novel is pervaded by religious reference. All
characters fall
into various "religious" postures: Dorothea
the central character has the true "religious" dedicat-ion,
Casanbon is a false prophet; Rulstrode is a parody-prophet,
Lydgate is the nearly true prophet - a II s c i e nt i f i c Phoenix ll -
somehow deflected from his prophecy; Ladislaw is the true
prophet. He is systematically assimilated to the Christ, and
the analogy would be complete but for the omission from his
figure, of the supremely important element of Christ's sacri-
fice. This ic:; .rio t surprising in a novel which is about progress
without guilt.
Even th~ngs in Middlema~eh are invested with reli-
gious import. The political ne ws pa pe r s The Piollee~ and the
T~umpet are parodies of the progress metaphors for the first,
and of the apocalyptic for the second. Even the Weight6 and
Seale6,
that modest rural
tavern, evokes the sense of balance.
Along with its wretched tenant, the miserahle farm called
F~cemall'~ End constitutes an eloquent little drama of the free-
dom - restraint metaphors.

---

203
Because Daniel De~ouda deals with Judaism, we cannot Dossibly
expect the profusion of Chr'istian symbols, nevertheless we have
i nth e fig ureo f ~1 0 r de c ei , the un i ve r sal s ym b01 0 f a pro phet.
a true prophet, a man almost physically consummated by the
flame of his
ardour.
I I I - S P ECI FIe S Y~1 [3 0 L -
From what we have seen above, we can deduce that a
system of symbolism basically depends on the existence of a
commonly known body of ideas or beliefs. But these are not
necessarily conventional.
In this ~art of the study of Eliotfs
symbolism, we are going to see how an author comes to create
his own system of symbolism. The process consists in the use
of repeated images woven into patterns who move towards sym-
bolism.
Several scenes in George Eliot's novels present
symbolic objects wRich are not parts of larger patterns. Gene-
rally, these objects are made symbolic by association with
actions whose moral
significance is clear; natural and domes-
tic objects are thus given conceptual import for the symbolic
enactment of moral qual ities. A familiar example is George
Eliot's use of two of her standard properties, the mirror and
the window, associated with the self-absorrtion of egoism and
the outward orientation of its anthithesis. We saw how the two
arc immediately juxtaposed in cl1.15 of ,l.d(lm tse d« "The Two 8ed-
c hambc r s ", \\'1 he r e ItJ e VI (1 t c he d Het t y () S s h(~ \\" 3.S per for mi nq her

---

204
ritual of self-worship
before the mirror, while in the adja-
cent room, Dinah, sitting before her window was thinking of
the lot of mankind. Here the two objects - mirror and window -
are used as a means of characterization. They serve the same
purpose in Middlema~ch too. Fair and vain Rosamond would
preferably sit "in a place from where she can catch her image
once in a while in a mirror. Of wise Doroth8a, we are told
that her drawing-room had "two ~~C~ m;~h~~~ and tables with
nothing on them - in brief, it was a room where you had no
reason for sitting in one place rather than in another ll (20)~
In
Vaniel Ve~onda this symb01 is used economically because
its presence at once conveys Gwendol~nl.s egoism.Thus, Gwendo-
len's different reactions to it mark the different phases of
the change she undergoes.
In the first scene, she actually kisses
her image. The satisfaction she draws from her ~eauty is an
opiate to her sorrow:
Gwendolen knew nothing of such inward
strife. She had a nalve delight in her fortunate self, which
I
any but the harshest saintliness will have some indulgence for
in a girl who had every day seen a pleasant reflection ~f t~at
self iriher friend's flatte~y as well as in the looking-glass.
And even in this beginning of troubles, while for lack of any-
thing else to do she sat gazing at her image in the growing
light, her face gathered a complacency gradual as the ch e e r f ul ne s :
oft hem 0 r ni ng. Her beau t i f u1 1 i ps cur 1e din to a ·m 0 rea nd m0 re
decided smile,
till at last she took off her hat, leaned forward
and kissed the cold glass which had looked so warm. How could
she believe in sorrow? (21).

---

This early scene becomes a point of reference for
indicating the changes which take place in Gwendolen. Thus
when her family's financial
down-fall
has darkened her prospects,
" the s elf - del i g ht \\v i t h whi c h she had k i s sed her -j mage i nth e
glass had faded before the sense of futil ity" (22). As she is
forced to assess the ressources which may be used in her present
situation, she examines her image again, not with delight but
wit h a n at t em pta t cool
a pp r a i sal, t hink i ng "I am be aut i f u1 -
not exultingly, but with grave decision"
(23).
Later, after her
marriage to Grandcourt, she lino longer felt inclined to kiss
her fortunate image in the glass; she looked at it with wonder
that she could be so miserable ll (24), and a moment later we
see her IIlooking at herself in a mirror - not in admiration,
but in a sad kind of companionshipll (25). Finally, further dimi-
nished by the misery of her marriage and the effort of disgui-
sing the whole thing, she places her large drawing room IIlike
an imprisoned dumb creature, not recognjzing herself in the
glass pa ne l s " (26). This series of parallel scenes traces the
change in Gwandolen and then ends as her self-concern, whether
in delight or misery, finally yields to the sense of a larger
world beyond her which Deronda brings.
The window is almost never used in that economic way.
Its function is always local. The window almost always trans-
lates the character's detachment from his immediate environment,
that is the projection of himself into another world. This, often
toe 1ude a n UIn P1e a s a ntor 0 ppI' e s s i vel" e a 1i t y.
Ins h0 r t i t con vey s
any state of mind from bewilderment to relief. hope to despair

---

206
and vice-versa. Here are a few examples 9athered at random.
Dejected Rex in VCHl-<,(J,t VC}LOVlda
"sat still and looked out of the
bow-window on the lawn and shrubs covered with hoar-frost
He felt as if he had had a resurrection into a new world" (27).
Mlddtemah~h is the richest in the symbolic use of the window.
A character's reaction or non-reaction to the window can convey
his attitude to, or interest in.the world around him. We are
told that "with his taper stuck before him he (Casanbon) forgot
the absence of windows, and in bitter manuscript remarks on
other men's notions about the solar deities, he had become indif-
ferent to the sunlight" (28)
; while Dorothea, "as she laid the
cameo-cases on the table in the bow-window, ... unconsciously
kept her hands on them, immediately absorbed in looking out on
the s t ill, whit e e nc 10 sur e whie h mad e her vis i b1e WOI' 1d ., ( 29 ) .
And her indifference to the scene offered by the window shows
that she is wrought-up:
"the open bow-window let in the serene
glory of the afternoon lying in the avenue, where the lime-trees
cast long shadows. But Dorothea knew nothing of the dazzling
sunrays
if therewere discomfort in that, how could she tell
that it was not part of her inward misery?" (30). Often with
Dorothea, the window becomes the antithetic symbol of claustro-
ph0 b i a. For her, "t: I e mere ch a nee 0 f see i ng"1 ill 0 cc a s ion all y
was like a lunette opened in the wall of her prison, giving
her a glimpse of the sunny air" (31). As ~'Iill enters Dorothea's
house, Eliot finds it necessary to mention the presence and the
position of the window'"
the bcu do t r ... had ... also a
bow-w i ndow looking out on the avenue. Gut wh e n Pratt showed
VJ ill
La cl i s 1aw i nt 0 i t the VI i nd0 w VI 0.sop en" (3 2 ). \\.J hen Will ask s
her whether she minds hi m 90;n9 away , in her bewilderment "s he

---

'107
t..
.
was not aware how long it was before she answered. She had
turned her head and was looking out of the window on the rose-
bushes, which
seemed to have in them the summers of all the
yea r s vJ hen l~ ill w0 u1cl be away" (3 3 ). t1j U c h 1ate r, i n Wi 'I 1 "s pr e -
sence, as she was at pains to repress her love and could hardly
overe 0 me her e m0 t ion, she \\'1 as" wa 1 kin 9 to vI a r ds the win d0 w, yet
speaking and moving with only a dim sense of wh a t she was doing"
( 34 ). E1se \\'1 her ewe are told t hat "w hi 1e Bu1s t ra dew rot e, Ly dgat e
turned to the window thinking of his home - thinking of his
life with its good stard saved from frustration, its good pur-
poses still broken" (35). Later, when Do ro t he a beseeches h i m
to tell
the whole truth about Raffles'
death, "Lydgate started
up from his chair and went towards the window, forgetting where
he was"
(36) .• As we can see, the window 'in George Eliot's fiction
is almost never a simple contingent architectural detail.
The river is another of George Eliot's created symbol
which appears in all
her novels. This natural element is mainly
used as a symbol of purification.
In some cases, it first works
as a Nemesis, and then as a purifying element. The river in
Adam Bede stands as a Nemesis for Thias Bede, an irresponsible
father who goes out drinking when he should be at work. He is
drowned on his way back home, certainly too drunk to cross the
river steadily. Nemesis is the river for Grandcourt as wellJthat
aristocratic boa-constrictor, who finds death in deep water.
In both cases (especially in Grandcourt's), we can almost say
without any rretention to be ourselves better mortals - that
the river purifies Nature by anihilating those pernicious elements.

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200
Mirah wants to drown herself to put an end to her miseries,
but because she is too pure a soul, Deronda is made to come
just in time to save her. Maggie and Tom Tulliver are drowned,
but in their case it is more a baptism of a II ne w life ll than
a purification.
It is a baptism of new understanding, though
all
the same we cannot help feeling as Voltaire's Micromegas
that IIA peine a-t-on commence a s'instruire un peu que la
mort arrive avant qu'on ait de l t e xp e r t e nc e " (37). But Eliot
wanted it that way, and our part is only to accept.
If the mirror, the window, and the river are George
Eliot's favourite symbols, common to all her novels, we find
some other objects specific to two novels, and used as
symbols - and not in the least unsuccessful. Other metaphors
thus tend to be, or to become, explicit symbols of psycholo-
gical or moral conditions, and they actually tend to function
in such a way as to give symbolic value to much action, as
Dorothea's plea.sure in planning buildings:
lI a
kind of work
which she delighted t n ? , and Casambon's desire to construct
a 11 key to a 11 t~y t h0 log i e s 11 •
Insignificant objects may by their context, be
symbolically extended. Until Hetty's pregnancy is obvious, one
of the few obligue signs of her seduction is the fate of her
pink silk handkerchief. But this is linked up with the finery
she adores, the cheap jewellery she wea r s -i n her
bedroom giving
)
way to Arthur's presents as later she dresses for his birthday
fe a s t
:

---

209
But there was something more to be done, apparently, before
she put on her neckerchief and long sleeves, which she was to
wear in the day-time, for now she u~locked the drawer that held
her private treasures.
It is more than a month since we saw
her unlock that drawer before, and now it holds new treasures,
so much more precious than the old ones that these are thrust
into the corner. Hetty would not care to put the large coloured
glass earings into her ears now; for see! she has got a beau-
tiful pair of gold and pearls and garnet, lying snugly in a
pretty little box lined with white satin (38).
These jewels significantly reappear later in the novel as a
material index of Hetty's dwindling dreams and hopes. As a
,matter of fact, .s he has eventually to use them in order to afford
her homeward journey from Windsor. The hard facts of life over-
take the pretty emblems of romance. But the jewellery does not ~
like the neckerchief, function simply as a means of hinting at
that part of the story which cannot be explicitly told,. it also
allows,by extension, for contrasts of character.
It is indeed
I
significant that Arthur gives Dinah no finery, no ornament, but
his watch and chain, which are useful
items. Again, when Adam
goes to Hall Farm to court Hetty, he gives her not jewels,but
a rose which, he adds prudently and significantly:
lI y o u
can
put it in water a f t e r " (39). But Hetty's mind is on Arthur and
she can only treat Adam's gift as she would Arthur's :
Hetty took the rose, smiling as she did so at the pleasant
thought that Arthur could so soon get back if he liked.
There was a flash of hope and happiness in her mind, and
with a sudden impulse of gaiety' she did what she had very
often done before - stuck the rose in her hair a little

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210
above the left ear. The tender admiration in Adam's face
was slightly shadowed by reluctant disapproval
(40).
The diamonds in Vaniel Venonda also exemplify George
Eliot's characteristic.subtle and inevitable use of symbolism.
They are Grandcourt's mother's diamonds 1I1 0 ng ago ll given to
Lydia to wear. His asking them back for Gwendolen is his means
of announcing to Lydia that the relations they symbolize - mari-
tal - virtually - are to cease. Lydia refuses to give the dia-
monds up for they were given to her as his wife, and his wife
she has been in all but legal form and social recognition. She
eventually concedes and sends them to Gwendolen on the night of
her wedding-day with an enclosed message that turns them to
poison:
III am the grave on which your chance of happiness is
buried
11
(41). And from that moment, the diamonds become for
Gwendolen the consciousness of that past of Grandcourt's with
Lydia which precludes any possibility of good married relations
between him and herself. The first time she appears in public
after her marriage, we see her wearing the diamonds and the
author tells us that her "belief in her power of dominating
had ut t e r l y gone ll • And again and again, with inevitable natural-
ness, the diamonds play their symbolic part. At the final
stage,
they come to represent Nemesis:
they are what Gwendolen married
Grandcourt for, and her punishment is having to wear them.
With this last image of Nemesis, we come to the con-
clusion to Ge o r qe Cliot's symbolism. Symbolism in Eliot's fiction
is in service of her moral speculation.

---

211
With her, insignificant objects become explicit symbols of
psychological or moral
conditions
and simple mortals are pit-
J
ched in a high, or even lower key, through their association
to biblical ,figures. While we all easily acknowledge that the
Bible as a source of symbol enriches)embellishes, elevates
George Elliot's work, we are forced, after a closer analysis,
to admit
George Eliot's use of natural and commonplace objects
as also part of the general strategy of style which does not
call attention to itself but directs it toward the central
-.
human drama.
IV - SHIFT OF MODE -
It is all very well to built up a system of symbolism,
whatever effective or sophisticated. But is it enough for the
system to claim a right to perfection? To this we may answer
II noll,
with some confidence. For one always ought to consider
one delicate aspect which has its full
importance
the degree
I
of consistencY,that is, in George Eliot's novels, the degree
of realism, for realism is required by the fundamental moral
purpose which underlies George Eliot's symbolism, and this tends
to create a kind of conflict between symbolism and realism to
which the author is confronted. Should the two be not well
balanced, the whole thing could result in a damaging, obtrusive
shift of mode.
In this part of the study, we will interest our-
selves in the consistency - if any - of George Eliot's mode.

---

2 12
To make this problem more concrete, W2 will begin
by citing an example in which the balance between symbolism
and realism is obtained in the most satisfactory manner. The
use of water imagery for feelings
is, we have seen, as much
a part of George Eliot's basic imaginative vocabulary as the
mirror and the window.
In Adam
Bede, ch. 17, Eliot says that
"human feeling is l I ke the mighty rivers that bless the earth",
and this probably explains why Deronda is born toward his cru-
cial encounters with both Mirah and MordecaT upon the river.
But in none of these cases is there such an elaborate prepara-
tion for the investment of a literal object with conceptual
significance as it is in The Mill On the Flo~~. In book VI,
ch. 13, t1 a gg i e i s bot h 1 i t era 1 1y and fig urat i vel y 11 B0 r ne A10 ng
by the Tide" past the point of no return. The scene has become
symbolic, so that both levels - literal and figurative - are
present in passages such as that where Maggie yearns to believe
"that the tide wa s doing it all
- that she might glide along
with the swift, silent stream, and not struggle any more".
It is a symbolism which requires a delicate balance of the two
levels. The overassertion of symbol will
distort realistic
probability, but if symbolic meaning is not fully present in
the actual
it remains on the usual
contextl~l, auxiliary level.
NOV-J,
such a balance is rare in Ge o r qe Eliot's novels,
which normally function in a more realistic mode, and when at-
tained, as it is here it is in danger of toppling over into a
situation where symbol
is asserted at the expense of realism.
This is what happen in the last chapter of The Mill on the Flo~~.

---

21 3
The river has been restricted to association with Maggie's pas-
sion ; the author's commentary has analysed the stream of
feeling into some of its moral components:
"The stream of
vanity was soon swept along and mingled imperceptibly with that
wi de r cur r e nt " (4 2 ). Suc h con t e xt ua l prep a rat ion s t ill all 0 \\'1 S
for some moments of double reference in the final
chapter like
11
\\'
those in the chapter "Borne Along by the Tide
where there was
no choice of courses, no room for hesitation, and she floated
into the current" . But as the passage d r i ve s cl 0 s e r toward the
catastrophe, realism is increasingly subordinated to symbol.
The river, which has been equated to with Maggie's fatal
passion
remains a consistent symbol
to the end, that is the catastrophe.
But what is disturbing, on the realistic level, is the plausi-
bility of that catastrophe. The boat carrying Tom an d ~1aggie
is overwhelmed by some strange "wo ode n machinery" sprung from
God knows where,and which,in addition inexplicably moves at
a faster rate than the boat when both are in the same current
and what is more, Tom is rowing, so that he sould in fact be
pulling away from that infernal machinery. This is evidently
a purely symbolic contrivance, also revealed in the telling
rare appearance of the pathetic fallacy:
"the huge mass was
hurrying on in hideous triumph" (43). Clearly, the ending of
I h e. Mitt on.
.:thc. FtO.6.6
involves a shift in mode,
wh i c h here makes
the ruin of the novel.
Va III c. t
V (' /1.0 11 d a a 1s 0 i s sub j e c t
t 0
s uc had ama gin 9
shift in mode. This is obvious in the parts dealing with Mordecai
and wi t h Deronda's qr ow i nq sense of his mission.

---

21 ~
To exemplify this, we will
isolate the section in which Deronda
and Mordecal meet at Blackfriars Bridge in Chapter 40.
A~ in
the case of the river in
The. Mill 011 .:the
tt.o s s ,
1 i t e r a l
fact
is given a prepared symbolic meaning, but instead of specific
psychological associations we find vague and visionary ones.
We are told that r~ordecal "habitually thought of the Be-ing
answering to his need as one distantly approaching or turning
his back toward him, darkly painted against a golden sky" (44),
a scene associated with Blackfriars Bridge at sunset, as the
Messianic figure becomes associated with Deronda.
In the scene
where they actually meet, reality is made to fulfill
vision;
all these images are made actual. The visionary of the scene
is stressed. Mordecai" feels "that his inward prophecy was ful-
filled
...
the prefigured friend had come from the golden back-
ground, and had signalled to him: this actually was:
the rest
was to be 11 (45). And we have a strong feeling that the scene
presents, not a confrontation of realistically rendered indivi-
duals, but " a meeting - place for the spiritual messengers" (46).
It is a scene of "moral fantasy", an attempt to lend conviction
to the birth of a vocation which can only be expressed symboli-
cally because it has no realistic counterpart. And just as in
the end of The Mill ~
.:the
Flo/.)/.) , when the narrative moves
into
a primarily symbolic level the resultant shift of mode does
not carry George Eliot toward symbolism but into fantasy and
romance. Such a shift is fatal
to her realism.
These are just a few stylistic blots. The most impor-
tant is the meaning, the message to mankind, which in George
Eliot1s novels, is unva r i a b l y carried out.

---

1. Adam Bede ch 42 P.
405
2.
Ibid,
ch 42 P.
406
3.
Ibid, ch 42 P.
406
4 .
Ibid, ch 42
5.
Ibid, ch 47
6.
Ibid, ch 53 P.
485
7.
Ibid, ch 5 P.P. 74-5
8.
Ibid, ch 39 P.
386
9.
Ibid, ch 45 P.P. 428-31
10.
Ibid, ch 43 P.
408,9
11. The Mill 111,9 p.P.
283-4
12. Middlemareh ch 80 P.
846
13.
ef note
14.
Ibid, Finale P.
890
15.
Ibid,
ch 20 P.
47
16.
Ibid ch 3 P. 51
17.
Ibid,
ch 3 P. 51 a
18.
Ibid, ch 20 P.
229
19.
Ibid, ch 10 P.P. 112-13
20.
ibid,
ch 54 P. 585
21.
Daniel Deronda, ch 20 P.
47
22.
Ibid, ch 21 P. 270
23.
Ibid, ch 23 n,L •
294
24.
Ibid, ch 35 P.
477
25.
Ibid,
ch 35 P.
485
26.
Ibid, ch 48

---

27.
Ibid,
ch 8 P.
117
28. Middlemarch ch 20 P.
230
29.
Ibid,
ch 28 P.P.
306-7
30.
Ibid, ch 42 P. 463
31.
Ibid, ch 37 P.
497
32.
Ibid ch 54 P.
585
33.
Ibid,
ch 54 P. 587
34.
Ibid,
ch 83 P.
867
35.
Ibid,
ch 70 P.
760
36.
Ibid,
ch 76 P.
819
37. Voltaire : micromegas
(Paris
nouveaux classiques Larousse
1970 P.
27
38. Adam Bede ch 22 P.
242
39.
Ibid, ch 20 P.
218
40.
Ibid, ch 20 P.
218
41.
Daniel Deronda ch 31 P.
406
42. The Mill VI,
9, P.
457
43.
Ibid VII,
5 P.
546
44. Daniel Deronda ch 38 P. 530
45.
Ibid, ch 40 P. 550
46.
Ibid, ch 40 P. 551

---

EVOLUTION OF SOME ASPECTS
OF GEORGE ELIOT'S NARRATIVE
TECHNIQUE

---

2 1 fj
The most important thing in a work of art is that
it should have a kind of focus, i.e. there should be some
place where all the rays meet or from which they issue. And
this focus must not be able to be completely explained in
words. This indeed is one of the significant facts about a
true work of art - that its content in its entirely can be
expressed only by itself.
Leo To1stoy (1)
Don't let anyone persuade you .. that strennons se-
lection and comparison are not the very essence of art, and that
Form is substance to that degree that there is absolutely no
substance without it. Form alone takes, and holds and preser-
ves, substance.
Henri James (2)
Before everything, a story must convey a sense of
inevitability: th5t which happens in it must seem to be the
only thing that could have happened. Of course a character may
cry:
"If I had then acted differently how different everything
would now be". The problem of the author is to make his then
action the only action that character could have taken.
(47)
For d ~'1 ado x For d .

---

2 1 I
EV0 LUTI 0N 0 F S0t1 E ASP r CTS 0 F
GEORGE ELIOT'S NARRATIVE
TECHNIQUE
Now that we have surveyed Eliot's practice of fiction,
we will
now attempt to follow the evolution of her technique
by tracking down the different phases of her narrative and
descriptive methods. To do so more effectively, we will
start
by examining the structure of each novel, taking into account
the kind of language, the narrative and descriptive methods
which are being used.
CHAPTER I
STRUCTURE AND FORM
I - ADAM BEDE -
Structurally speaking, space and time are the two
main materials exploited by George Eliot in the construction
of Adam Bede.
In Tolstoyan terms, we have two kinds focus.
The virtual world created in Adam Bede possesses two
major divisions:
the counties of Loamshire and Stonyshire
(with their villages, Hayslope and Snowfield). Their quasi-
symbolic names suggest, as we can see, that the two places
stand in complete antithesis.

---

21 U
Most of the action of the novel
takes place in Loam-
shire, in and around the village of Hayslope. Protected to the
\\\\
/I
north from keen and hurgry winds by the gentle heights of the
Binton Hills, Loamshire is a sheltered and fertile land, a
"region of corn and grass" where the farms
(excepting those
of such miscreants as Luke Britton) produce the necessities
and, indeed, the luxuries of life in great abundance. Pros pe-
rity,
if not omnipresent, is nevertheless common:
poverty is
rare. Exile from this snug world is regarded by its inhabitants
as the worst evi 1 that can befall
them.
Throughout the novel. however, we are reminded of a
different sort of country - Stonyshire, where the land, naked
under the sky, is barren and "wh e r e the trees are few, so that
a child might co~nt them, and there's very hard living for the
poor in the winter" (3). The people of Stonyshire earn their
liveli hood not by tilling a fertile soil but by digging deep
beneath the earth1s surface in rocky mines or by labouring
in the dark mills of sooty cities like Stoniton.
In this "dreary
bleak place", poverty is the ~ommon lot of the people.
It is evident that George Eliot i~ using Dinah,
~1rSPoyser, and the Bedes as a means of defining the symbolic
relationship of Loamshire and Stonyshire.
In fact, every charac-
ter in the book is made to fit, at one moment or another, in
one of the two countries. Hearing about the two countries from
Dinah, we sense a hardness lurking at the core of Loamshire
which is spiritually hollow.
Yet the position taken by Mrs Poyser
a nd the Bedes is not wi t hout merit:
they a r e say-ing, although

---

219
each differently, that peorle who have known only a kind of
attenuated existence are in no position to judge what life is,
or should be. At the same time they fail
to realize that
hunger may be spiritual as well as physical.
In these terms
Loamshire is a hungry land, because some (at least) of its
people, never having known privation and suffering, cannot
therefore understand or sympathize with want, poverty, or
even ugliness. Like Loamshire itself.such people may present
to the world a beautiful, polished, or vital exterior, which
nevertheless conceals a hardiness at the core. Chief among
such characters in the book are Mrs Irwine, Squire Donnithorne,
and Martin Poyser.
Mrs Irwine is a woman who judges by externals only:
"Nat ur e never makes a ferret in the shape of a mastiff. You'll
never persuade me that I can't tell what men are by their out-
s i de s " (4). That she feels this way is partly the result of her
own egotism: she is herself a very splendid old lady.
Intelli-
gent and penetrating, she has a "s ma l l intense black ey e :", so
IIkeen and sarcastic in its expression ll that she looks at times
almost like a gypsy fortune teller. Judging others by their
appearance, she is careful of her own , taking "a long time to
dress in the mo r n i nq ". Of her son she is inordinately fond,
even when she finds him on occasion too easy tempered. For
her daughters, however, she cares less - she is, in fact, almost
indifferent to thern : they are plain and sickly, and II s pl e ndid
old ladies
have often slight sympathy wi t h sickly da uqht e r s "
( 5 ) .

---

220
Very much like Mrs Irwine, is old Squire Donnithorne.
He too is outwardly a splendid person, careful
in his dress,
icy 1y
po1 -j t e i n his mann e r s . "H e ~"i a sal INay s po 1 i t e ? , Ge 0 r 9e
E1i 0 t Iv r 'j t e s , "b ut the far IIIe r s had f Gun d 0 ut, aft e r 10 ng puz -
zling, that this polish was one of the signs of hardness.
It
was observed that he gave his most elaborate civility to
M~Poyser ...
inquiring particularly about her health ... Mrs
Poyser curtsied and thanked him with great self-command, but
I'
when he had passed on, she whispered to her husband, 1 1 11
lay my life he's brewin l some nasty turn against us. Old Harry
does no wag his tail so for nothin l" (6).
As Mrs Irwine represents the hardness of one level
of the Loamshire world and the Squire another, so Mr Poyser
represents yet a third, and quite possibly the most important
that of Mrs Irwine and Squire Donnithorne lies on the genteel
fringes of the novel, where it might be expected; Martin
Payser's hardness, however, lies at the book's vital center.
Almost an exact duplicate of the prosperous world in which he
lives, he gives no external evidence of hardness: well-fed,
good-natured, he is an excellent husband and a loving father.
But occasionally there are signs of severity in him, as for
example in his attitude towards a neighbour, Luke Britton,
"whose fallows were not. well cleaned, who didnlt know the rudi-
ments of hedging and ditching, and showed but a small share
of judgment in the purchase of winter stock" (7).
TO\\'I a r ds Br i t ton he i s a bsol ut e 1y u111 ben din <J, 11 Cl s ha r d and imp1 a -
cab 1e Cl S the nor t h- e a s t 1'1 i nd" (8). The rea son i s t hat the

---

221
slovenly farmer violates all the principles of good husbandry
which Martin holds dear and \\~hich constitute a major part of
his moral code, ranking second only to family honour.
In a
sense, therefore, we should be prepared for the complete lack
of sympathy Martin exhibits toward Hetty when she too violates
his moral
code by
bringing disgrace upon the family. Then, as
a
paterfamilias (but also clearly as representative of Loamshire)
he is swift and unrelenting in his judgment of her. Yet his
.severity takes us by surprise, much as it does Mrs Poyser herself,
"-
who for once stands silent in awe of her husband.
These three characters, then, evidently stand in
need of Dinah's message of sympathy and compassion.
It would
do them all good to live in Stonyshire for a while, to expe-
rience suffering and thereby add to the dimension of the head
that of the heart - to become, in short, full human beings.
This does not mean to become like Dinah. She is no more a com-
plete personality at the beginning of the book than' Hetty, for
Dinah is all heart and passive receptivity; she lacks head.
It does mean, however, to become like Mr Irwine, Barthe Massey,
and Mrs Payser, all
(significantly enough) Loamshire dewellers,
but separated from their compatriots because, unlike them, each
has known some form of suffering or privation and is therefore
able, in George Eliot's terms, to sympathize with the misery
of others.
Ba r t he nassey, wh os e past is a mystery, is lame. ~;rs
rayser, though sound of limb, has been in precarious health since

---

222
the birth of her youngest child, Totty.
If Mr Irwine does
not appear to have suffered very much himself, he has neverthe-
less known a good deal of vicarious misery, for both of his
sisters are sickly and one, with whom he is invariably sympa-
thetic, suffers from stunning migraines.
Furthermore, he has
had to forego marriage in order, ironically enough, to support
in style a mother whose hardness toward her daughters is a
source of constant distress to him.
Because of their knowledge of suffering these charac-
ters are compassionate: they possess the attributes of heart
as well as head; their worldly knowledge and keen intelligence
are always tempered by sympathy and love. This balance of head
and heart is usually presented dramatically through characters'
actions; we also hear of it directly from the author when,
in speaking of someone like
Mrs Poyser, she repeatedly links
the words "keenness" and "mildness" (or the equivalent).
In the case of Mrs Poyser we are perhaps inclined to
remember only that she is keen, agreeing with Mr Irwine that
"her tongue is like a new-set razor" (9), or recalling the
"freezing arctic ray" of her glance. But there is another di-
mension to her personality which we are never permitted to forget.
From Adam, for example, we learn that if "her tongue's keen,
her he a I~ t ' s t end er" (1 0).
I t -i sas IT! 0 the r tot he eve r - na ught Y
Tatty that this combination of mildness and keenness, head and
heart, is made most clear: the sight of her child riding secure
on Adam's s hou l de r s is pl e a s a nt to her:
"Bless your s we e t face,

---

223
my pet ', she said, the mother's strong love filling her keen
eyes with mildncss ll (11).
The same combination of keenness and mildness is
c ha 1" act e 1" i s tic 0 f ~,1 1" I rvJ i net 0 o. IV ere a d t hat 11 the 1" e was a
certain virtue in that benignant yet keen countenance, as there
i sin all
hum an fa c e sfI' 0 m whie hag e ne 1" 0 us sou 1 be arn sou t 11 (1 2 ) .
What is true of Irwine is equally true of Barthe Massey. As
a teacher he is wrathful with erring youth; but with those
mature men, common laborers, who come to him that they may
learn to read, he is all
patience and mildness; for them his
\\'
face wore the mildest expression: the grizzled bushy eyebrows
had taken their more acute angle of compassionate kindness,
and the mouth,· habitually compressed with a pont of the lower
lip, was released so as to be ready to speak a helpful word
or syllabe in a moment. This gentle expression was the more
interesting because the school-master's nose, an irregular aqui-
line twisted a little on one side, had a rather formidable cha-
racter ; and his brow, moreover, had that peculiar tension
which always impresses one as a sign of a keen impatient tem-
f'
perament.
(13)
What George Eliot is presenting in these three
cha-
racters, with their combination of keenness and mildness, the
billance in them of head and heart is, we may say, a concept of
maturity - what a fully developed human personality is, or
r a t ho r o uqh t
to be, l i ko . But now , one might ask where do these
three characters fit in Georgc Eliot's presupposed scheme.

---

224
To which we may a ns we r that qe oq r a ph i c a l l y speaking, they
belong to Loamshire, and spiritually, to Stonyshire.
But none of the book's major characters - neither
Hetty nor Adam nor Dinah - belong at first with Mr Irwine,
Barthe Massey and Mrs Payser, though some of them eventually
join that company.
Hetty Sorrel, as her name suggests, is a perfect re-
presentative of the Loamshire - Hayslope world: she has its
fertility, and she has its beauty, which nevertheless conceals
an essential hardness. To think of Hetty as she first appears
in the book is to think of her as being in certain places,
themselves microcosms of Loamshire : the Hall
Farm dairy,
its gal'den, and the Grove of the Donnithorne estate. Each of
these places has an individual aura, but all are suggestive
(with their associated imagery of vegetation, light-color,
warmth.
coolness, and moisture) of fertility and growth. To
each place Hetty is linked not only by her ~resence but also
by parallel
imagery: she too is described in terms of vege-
tation (flowers and fruit in particular), of light color, warm-
th coolness, and moisture.
,
FUl'thermore, each of these places is appropriate to
a par tic u1a r phas e 0 f Het t y 's i nv0 1ve IIIc nt \\'l i t h Art hur , The i r

---

2 2 ~
first t§te-a-t6te occurs in the Hall
Farm dairy.
George Eliot
emphasizes its cleanl iness and purity, but remains, by virtue
of its own nature and the associated imagery, subtly sexua-
lized. More explicity so is the setting of the rendezvous bet-
ween Arthur and Hetty which takes place in the Grove of the
Donnithorne estate. Eliot describesha wood of beeches and limes
with here and there a light, silver-stemmed birch - just the
sort of wood most haunted by the nymphs: you see their white
sunlit limbs gleaming athwart the boughs ... you hear their
soft liquid laughter - but if you look with a too curious sacri-
legious eye, they vanish behind the silvery beeches, they make
you believe that their voice was only a running brooklet ...
It was not a grove with measured grass or rolled gravel
...
but with narrow, hollow-shaped, earthy paths, edged with paint
dashes of delicate moss" (14).
When Adam comes to deliver the letter in which Arthur writes
that he and Hetty must no longer think of themselves as lovers,
Adam finds her in the garden of the Hall Farm. Here, in this
"leafy, flowery, bushy time", all things grow together in "care-
less, half-neglected abundance" (15). One sees "tall hollyhocks
beginning to flower, and dazzle the eye with their pink, white,
and yellow
syringas and gueldres roses, all large and
disorderly for want of trimming ... leafy walls of scarlet
beans and late peas ... a row of bushy filberts in one direction,
and in another a huge apple-tree making a barren circle under
its low-spreading boughs. But what signified a barren patch
/1
or two? (16).
It is appropriate of course that Hetty should
be found arno nq the hollyhocks and roses (hersel f so frequently
des cri bed i n t e 1'111 S 0 f f low C' I' S, I' 0 S e sin pCl rt i c u1a 1'). But i f the

---

226
floweriness and fertility of the place are appropriate, so
too is its rankness - growth without order or control.
A second link be tw ee n Hetty and the Loamshire world
is that of her beauty.
It was, Eliot writes, "a s pr i nq-i t i de
beauty; ... the beauty of young frisking things, round-limbed,
gambolling, circumventing you by a false air of innocence -
the innocence of a young stard - browed calf ... that
leads you a severe steeplechase over hedge and ditch, and only
comes to a stand in the middle of a bog" (17). Such beauty
at once suggestive of fertility and of the infantile, is diffi-
cult to comprehend in its effect:
"It is a beauty like that
of kittens, or very small downy ducks making gentle rippling
noises ... or babies just beginning to toddle and to engage
in conscious mischief - a beauty with which you can never be
angry, but that you feel
ready to crush for inability to compre-
hend the state of mind into which it t hr ow s you" (18).
It is
a false beauty, for it conceals in the case of Hetty a core
of hardness, as does the beauty of Loamshire itself.
In this
respect, if on a different social
level, she is similar to
Mrs Irwine or to the squire, and it is significant that those
who a 1-e 1 i ke her see 0 11 1y her beau t y : Mr sIr win e, for e xamp1e ,
laments the fact that it II s houl d be thrown away among the
far mer s 11 (1 9 ). But f(l r sPa y s e r i s not de c e i ve d.
She say s t hat
Hetty's heart is as hard as a pe bb l e and that "things take no
III 0 re
hold 0 n her t hani f she Iv a s a d r i e d pea 11 (20). She is" no
bet t ern 0 r a "c her r y wi I a ha r d s ton e ins i dei t" (2 1 ) .

---

227
Hetty1s hardness is that of childish or at best
adolescent egocentricity: all
people and events have value
or significance only as they impinge upon the narrow circle
of her own life; failing that, they are of no importance. At
the news of Mr Bede's death, for example, Hetty is concerned
only as
long as she thinks it is Adam who is meant; when
she discovers her error, she lapses into indifference. She cares
little about the Hall Farm, and although dutiful
towards her
aunt and uncle, she exhibits no real affection for them.
Totty, who serves so well as a measure of ~1rs Payser IS love,
is an equally good measure of Hetty's inability to love - anyone
besides herself, that is.
Indeed, there is a muted but persis-
tent strain of auto-eroticism in her: one thinks of her inordi-
nate love of flne clothes and adornment, and of such scenes
as those in which she appears as
lithe devout worshipper" before
a mirror (22) and in which she turns up the sleaves of her dress
and kisses her own arms "with the passionate love of life".
Even her love for Arthur is tinged with the same quality:
in
him she finds, for a brief time at least, the objectification
of her day-dreaming desires, but these in turn are only the
projection in fantasy of her own ego, sexually translated. What
she loves in him is not so much Arthur as her own self - as she
wishes she might be.
Her emotional
life is, in fact, a continuous fantasy,
as George Eliot suggests with recurring dream and day-dream
imagery, that Het t y is forever 11 t a ki 11 9 h01 i dil.Y in d rea In S of
p1e a s lJ reil for het \\'J0 r ka day 1 i f e i spa r t 1Y a c c 0 unt e d for ins 0 -
c i 0 log i ca 1 t er III s : Cl 11 the bus -j ne s S 0 f 1 i few a s III a nag e d for her

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228
which in turn is only another way of saying that the Loamshire
world (so sheltered and sheltering) has for personalities like
those of Hetty and Arthur, which lack energy and will, the
fat alp 0 \\JJ e r 0 f
ke e pin 9 the m f 0 r eve r chi 1dr en. Muc h 0 f the
tragedy - or catastrophe - of both Hetty and Arthur springs
from the fact that they are wilful children performing adult
actiDns in an age which is not golden; rather, to change the
reference, it is a post-lapsarian world in which actions are
neither innocent nor without consequences. Yet Loamshire is
sufficient by close to being an "earthly paradise" that at
times its inhabitants learn the truth only when it is too late.
In one sense, therefore, Hetty is the victim as well as repre-
sentative of the Loamshire world.
Dinah, early in the story, is aware of Hetty's posi-
tion and she tries to prepare her for the possibility of pain
in life, for the necessity of leaving her adolescent dreamworld,
of growing up. She addresses Hetty in the same terms as she
used in the sermon on the green. Like the villagers, however,
Hetty remains deaf and for the same reasons: her world has
never given her any evidence of the existence of suffering
or if it has, then in such fashion as to show that misery
always comes to someone outside the sheltered protection of
family or community. Thus her reaction to Dinah's words, like
that of the villagers, is minimal - only a chill fear which
remains vague and child-like.

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229
We are scarcely surprised at Hetty's awakening having
traumatic force. When she learns
in a letter from Arthur of
his determination to bring fueir affair to an end, all
vitality
is drained out of her:
her face becomes "blanched", she feels
"cold and sick and t r c mb l i nq " (23).
Even, the light of day
fails to cheer her, for it has become "d r e a r y " (24) to her
in her "dry-eyed morning misery" (25). He t t y t s suffering is
subsequently compounded by the knowledge that she is pregnant.
Dread of disgrace and censure force
her to flee Loamshire,
and in so doing she leaves for the first time a garden world
and enters a wasteland.
The reinforcing imagery George Eliot uses in pre-
senting the account of Hetty's trip to Windsor and back is
skilfully handled. The time of year is February, early in spring
by Loamshire standards, but a spring without hope or promise.
All the light and warmth of the earlier spring - summer world,
with its flowers and fruit, hay and ripening grain are gone,
and in their place bleak grayness pervades.
Instead of images
of shelter and containment, security and enclosure, George
Eliot now uses those of the city, with its baffling maze of
streets, of the long unending road, and of ~arren open fields.
Much of Hetty's trip is made through rainy weather. She finds
herself subject to coarse comments and is taken for a wild
woman and beggar (26).
Even the respite she knows at the inn
in Windsor is only like that of a Illiln who throws "himself on
the sand, instead of toiling onw a r d under the scorching sun"
( 27) .

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230
The effect of Hetty's ordeal
is to externalize the
hardness which, so far, has been concealed. Although at first
her pregnancy had brought about Cl sudden burgeoning of "woman-
liness" (28), wh e n she bears the child and then (if unintentio-
nally) kills it, she turns emotionally almost to stone:
she confesses to Dinah that when she returned to the place
where she had left the baby and saw that it was gone, "1 wa s
struck like a stone, with fear ... My heart went like a stone"
(29). Mr lrwine reports the change to Adarn, who sees it for
himself at Hetty's trial: she is now a "pale, hard-looking
culprit" (30).
Most of the Loamshire world is appalled by the hard-
ness Hetty exhibits, seeing how it has made something inhuman
of her. Few of them realize, however, how much they are impli-
cated in her condition; nor can any of them actually help
Hetty, since they are unwilling either to forg~e or comfort
her. But Dinah, the outsider from Stonyshire, where forgiving
love can exist because suffering is known, is able to restore
Hetty to humanity - to a better humanity, at least, than that
which she had been endowed with by her own world.
For the scene of regeneration,Gorge Eliot takes us,
through ever -increasing darkness, into the deep interior of
the prison, where in Cl tiny stone cell
(a fine objective corre-
lative of Hetty's heart) she has Dinah confront Hetty. No
attemp~ of Dinah's to get Hetty to speak is at first effective
she remains as unrc~ponsive as a stone.
Finally Dinah resorts
top t' i1Yer.
I nit the t w0 cl 0 ill i nant i mage S 0 f the c hCl Pt e I' - ha r dne s s

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231
and darkness - merge:
Dinah calls upon the Lord to take away
the darkness enveloping Hetty and to melt the hardness df her
heart. The prayer is efficacious. Hetty is led to confess,
spilling forth the whole pitiable tale of her journey in the
wasteland, of bearing the child, and then, because she wanted
so desperately to return to the world from which the fact of
illegitimate life exiled her, leaving the baby in a shallow
hole covered with leaves and chips in the hope that someone
would find it. The confession, a sufficiently damning account
of Hetty herself, is no less damning of the Loamshire world:
"1
daredn't go back home again - 1 couldn't bear it.
1 couldn1t
have bore to look at anybody, for they'd have scorned me" (31).
Dinah, however, does not scorn her, but with loving sympathy
comforts her. This is Hetty's regeneration.
To be frank it is not much of a regeneration, parti-
cularly when compared with that of Adam or even of Arthur
for although Hetty is no longer hard, she is able to ask
Adam's forgiveness, and is willing in turn to forgive Arthur,
the only new life she faces is that of exile. Absolved from
execution, she is nevertheless transported to the colonies,
where
she dies some years later. Goerge Eliot might just as
well have had her hanged to begin with. On a literal level the
punishment is not severe, but 1 feel
that on the level of moral
and psychological symbolism it is exceedingly harsh. As a
matter of fact,
it is at this point tllat Hetty becomes the
victim of her creator; for, although allowance has been made,
one is still left ~ith the impression that toward the kittenish

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232
Hetty there is some of the same hardness in George Eliot she
deplored in others. That there could be no room for Hetty
in Loamshire is, from a symbolic point of view, bad enough,
That apparently there could be no room for her anywhere in
George Eliot's scheme of things stands as an indictment
against the ethic which the book suggests.
No one can sustain that Adam Bede is a perfect human
being, fully mature in George Eliot's terms, from the begin-
ning. He is a long way at first from being an
Irwine, a
Barthe Massey, or even a ma s c ul ine c oun t e r pa rt of Mrs Poyser.
Rather, because in him, the head monstrously outweighs the
heart, he is kin to sharp old Mrs Irwine, the icily polite
Squire Donnithorne, and the Martin Payser made implacable
by slovenly husbandry and erring niece. Like them he may
possess a full measure of keenness, but he does not even have
Payser's jolly exterior.
In chapter 4, Adam reveals himself
as wrathful,
proud, unyielding, hot and hasty, untolerant
and essentially a humourless character.
Whenever, in George Eliot's moral world, there is
such Cln imbalance of head and heart, the keenness is in danger
of turning into hardness and pride. About Adam's pride there
is little disagreement; we hear of it on all sides and are
given frequent examples of it. The same is true of Adam's hard-
ness, wh i ch consists in having "too little fellow feeling with
the weakness that errs in spite of foreseen consequences. Without
this f e l l ow-Te e l i nq ;" George Eliot continues, "how are we to
get enough patience Clnd charity towards our stumbling, falling

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233
comp a ni o ns in the long and changeful
journey?" (32). The
answer, implicit in the first part of Adam Bede, is that we
do not. Repeatedly in the opening chapters of the book we see
Adam, proudly in control of his own life, lasing all
patience
with lesser mortals who stumble and fall
- like his own father,
for exam[lle. The function of old Thias Bede as a character is,
indeed, precisely that of revealing the extent of his son's
hardness. The same is true of Arthur (in part at least).
Toward both men Adam is unforgiving, and even when he repents
of his severity, the repentance is futile because it reflects
no gennine increase in his capacity for sympathy.
The reason is that Adam is not fully involved emo-
tionally with either his father or Arthur. As this is so, he
can neither participate in their plight nor understand it. What
is necessary for Adam (and here George Eliot permits herself
the luxury of writing a prescription) is that he gets his
heartstring~ bound round the weak and erring, so that he must
share not only the outward consequence of their error, but
their inward suffering (33).
Precisely such an emotional
invol-
vement exists for Adam in his relationship with Hetty. But this
r e l a tl o ns hi p is not a rational one; rather it is a passion
which overmasters him. Adam's heartstrings are bound fast to
Hetty. George Eliot has seen to that.
After Eliot has provided Adam with this full
involve-
men t , she ne xt III a kc sce r t a i nth a the Iv ill s uf fer a s are s u1t ,
first by having him learn that Arthur is Hetty's accepted lover

---

23~
next by having him think Hetty has run away from their approa-
ching marriage
and finally by having him learn of Hetty's
being brought to trial
in Stoniton for the murder of her child.
There is plenty of suffering here, but Adam's response is diffe-
rent from that of Hetty : where she sank into stasis, he goes
in the opposite direction toward violent action. Hetty fell
below the level even of human craving, Adam lusts for revenge.
The response of both is in keeping with their characters:
Hetty, whose hardness is that of selfishness, has no will at
all; faced with a situation she cannot handle, she is brought
to a dead halt. Adam, whose hardness is that of pride, is all
active will, and he lashes out. But the fierce desire for
activity does nothing to mitigate his suffering, the marks of
which, as in the case of Hetty, are revealed in the changes
in his physical appearance.
Yet, there is the possibility, in terms of the novel,
for regeneration through a human agent exercising the power of
love. Adam's suffering is indeed a precondition of his regene-
ration. The agent is a double one: Mr Irwine and Barthe Massey
Both men, themselves fully mature (with their balanced keenness
and mildness), do what they can to help Adam in his misery.
Sensing in him a potentiality for violence and a desire to take
vengeance on Arthur, they seek to divert him.
Irwine uses the
power of reason, arguing that to injure Arthur will not help
Hetty and that passionate violence will
lead only to another
crime (34). Adam agrees, but it is acquiescence, not full
accep-
tance. The latter is brollght about by Barthe Massey who awakens

---

2:1 3
companions in the long a nd changeful
journey?" (32). The
answer, implicit in the first part of Adam Bede, is that we
do not. Repeatedly in the opening chapters of the book we see
Adam, proudly in control of his own life, lasing all patience
with lesser mortals who stumble and fall
- like his own father,
for example. The function of old Thias Bede as a character is,
indeed, precisely that of revealing the extent of his son's
hardness. The same is true of Arthur (in part at least).
Toward both men Adam is unforgiving, and even when he repents
of his severity, the repentance is futile because it reflects
no gennine increase in his capacity for sympathy.
The reason is that Adam is not fully involved emo-
tionally with either his father or Arthur. As this is so, he
can neither participate in their plight nor understand it. What
is necessary for Adam (and here George Eliot permits herself
the luxury of writing a prescription) is that he gets his
heartstring~ bound round the weak and erring, so that he must
share not only the outward consequence of their error, but
their inward suffering (33). Precisely such an emotional invol-
vement exists for Adam in his relationship with Hetty. But this
relationship is not a rational one; rather it is a passion
which overmasters him. Adam's heartstrings are bound fist to
Hetty. George Eliot has seen to thilt.
After Eliot has provided Adilm with this full
involve-
ment, she next makes certain that he will suffer as a result,
first by having him learn that AI·tlHJI~ is Hetty's accepted l ove r

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235
f\\dam to full
consciousness and makes him p3.rticipate in a kind
of Lord's Supper (35) which significantly enough takes place
in Stoniton.
Adam's subsequent decision to stand by Hetty, an ex-
pression of his old love for her as well as his new willingness
to involve his life with the suffering of others, has two con-
sequences: it leads to his being able to forgive Arthur, and
it makes him capable of a new sort of love, which emerges from
sympathy.
For the carpenter Adam, Loamshire still
remains the
ideal place; but Stonyshire who has marked on him has irreme-
diably become his second mother-land. Adam now belongs - in the
same way as Mr Irwine, Barthe Massey, and Mrs Payser do - to
the two worlds of Loamshire and Stonyshire. This alliance is
further actualised in his union with Dinah, the main represen-
tative of the world of Stonyshire.
If Dinah belongs and represents the world of Stonyshire,
she is nevertheless not a complete human being. She too lacks
something at the b~ginning of the story.
For despite her mild-
ness and compassion, her selfishness and love of God, she has
little genuine vitality - Dinah is all
heart. She scarcely
seems to breathe in the midst of her enduring calm and takes
little or no nourishment - only scant victuals, as Mrs Pavser
.
.
would say. Confronted by a vigourous fruitful world, she retreats.
The cause of her retreat is the fear of selfishness and hardness
resulting from too q r e a t abundance of wo r l d l y goods. This much,
at least, Dinah says he r s c l f .

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236
Implicit in her fear is also,
I think, a kind of
unwillingness to become fully involved in 1 ife. She observes
the human condition, with sympathy and compassion, it is true,
but without involvement. Selfless is a word used frequently
in describing her, but selfless means not only something diffe-
rent from selfish; it also means lacking in self. To lack this
sense of human identify is to become something either less
or more than human - an idiot, perhaps, or a divinity. Talking
of herself to Mr Irwine, she says:
" I I m too mu ch g i ve n to s i t s t ill and ke e p by my s elf : i t
seems as if I could sit silent all
day long with the
thought of God overflowing my soul
- as
the pebbles lie
bathed in'the Willow Brook.
For thoughts are so great -
aren1t they, sir? They seem to lie us like a deep flood
and it's my besetment to forget where I am and everything
about me, and lose myself in thoughts that I could give
no account of, for I could neither make a beginning nor
ending of them in words" (36).
Such a state represents a complete withdrawal
from
life, and withdrawal
(or retreat) is characteristic of Dinah.
Whenever, life begins to seem too pleasant and seductive, Dinah
flees back to Stonyshire, barren and sterile under the 1I0verar-
ching sky" (37). The most notable of these strategic retreats
occurs after Adarn has told her of his love.
Following his de-
claration, Dinah replies that she c ou l d r e t ur n his love save
for the fCor that she would "forget to rejoice and weep with
ot he r s "!", even "forget the Divine presence"
(38).

---

23/
Her peace and joy c ome from havi ng no 1 i f e of her own. Adam IS
love only raises the fear that she will
forget Jesus, the
man of sorrows, and become hard:
"And think how it is with
me, Adam : - that life I have led is like a land I have trodden
in blessedness since my childhood; and if I long for a moment
to follow the voice which calls me to another land that I know
not, I cannot but fear that my soul might hereafter yearn for
that early blessedness which I had forsaken; and where doubt
enters there is no perfect love.
I must wait for clearer gui-
dance:
I must go from you" (39). Here is clear expression of
Dinah's fear of accepting full
maturity; for the land which
faces her (i .e. Loamshire and, of course, Adam) is a strange
one, and who knows what life there may hold for her? Better,
then, to return to the other land (Stonyshire and the self-
she
contained world of childhood). There at l e a s t Vru ns no risks.
If Hetty was incapable of growing up, Dinah is afraid to.
We are not permitted to see the process by which
Dinah is enabled to overcome her fear, which I consider it is
a serious flaw in the novel. All we learn is, that having been
told by Adam of his love for her and having admitted in turn
a love for him, Dinah once more retreats to Stonyshire, not
staying even long enough to participate in the Harvest Supper.
Adam, after waiting for several weeks, is no longer able to
endure the strain and sets out for Stonyshire to find her. As
he leaves the Loamshire world and enters grey treeless Stonyshire,
he is reminded of the painful
past, but in an altered light,
for he possesses what George Eliot calls a "sense of enlarged

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230
being" (~O), the consequence of the fuller life brought about
by this suffering.
He sees Stonyshire now through Dinah's eyes, and if his vision
includes the barren land, it also includes the wonderful floo-
ding light and the large embracing sky.
Adam waits for Dinah to return from her Sunday prea-
ching not at her home, but on a hill top.
Here, in the midst
of her world, he discovers that Dinah has undergone a change
the power of her love for him has, in a sense, overcome her
fears; she feels like a divided person without him, and she
is willing to become his wife. He therefore takes her back
to Loamshire, whence she had so precipitately fled.
It is not,
however, to the green and golden world of June with which the
book began; rather, to an autumnal mature world. Here, lion
a rimy morning in departing November" (41) when there is a
tinge of sadness in the weather as well as in the joy which
accompanies the wedding, Adam and Oinah are married.
Jt is
fitting that the h~nt of sorrow should be present, for in the
world which George Eliot reveals to us, life not only contains
sorrow, it needs sorrow in order that there may be love.
The novel thus closes on the melting, through the
marriage of Adam and Oinah, of the two worlds of Loamshire and
Dinah. We must admit that this conclusion is most satisfactory
a s far a s the unit y 0 f the boo k g0 e s . But, fro m the rea 1i s tic
point of view this ending might be objected to as being unnatural.
We arc here strongly aware of the author's contriving hand.

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239
From the moral
point of view, Adam is Dinah's match. But
I
feel
somehow, that this is not a sufficient reason for marry-
ing them. Their relationship excludes too many of those small
qualities and defects which make real
lovers charming and
convincing. Adam and Dinah, each for their own part, grow
and entertain pure, saintly love. Their marriage, from the
dramatic point of view, seems an anti-climax.
2 - Time
Adam Bede does not evolve only in space. It also evolves
in time, and tn just the same purposive way as
it does in
space. The massively slow movement of Adam Bede is one other
shape - making technique.
It is true that we are generally persuaded of the
actual
slow movement of rural life, and it is rural
life - the
life of villagers, tenant farmers, and peasantry - which George
Eliot describes. The movement is one of a massive leisureliness
which gathers as it goes a dense body of physical and moral
detail, adding particle to particle and building layer upon
layer with sea-depth patience.
We enter the description of the Hall
Farm in Chapter
6 Cl. tilt he dI' 0 Ws i est t i nl e 0 f the yea 1', jus t be f () I' e h Cl. Y- hat' vest 11
and at the drowsiest time of the day, too, for
it is close
upon three by the sun, and it is half-past three by Mrs Poyser1s

---

hundsome eight-day clock". Old Martin watches its hands, not
through engagement with time but through disengagement from
it ; he pleases himself with "d e t e c t i nq a rhythm in the tick"
as he does with watching the sun-gleams on the wall
and coun-
ting the quarries on the floor. And again, in the passage
describing the Poysers on their way to church, we are told
of "the excellent habit which Hrs Poys e r ' s clock had of taking
time by the forelock", so that, despite interruptions in their
walk, they arrive at the village "while it was still a quarter
to two"
(42). The mechanism of the eight-day clock works in
sympathy with the week, with the rhythm of workdays and Sabbath,
and we are reminded in the same passage of that other schedu-
ling of man's time which holds him to Sabbath observance no
matter if the h~y wants turning, for, as Mrs Poyser says,
"as for the weather there's One above makes it, and we must
put up wilt".
Therefore the eight-day clock, with its minute rhythms
for an old manls ear, with its rhythm for the daily work that
starts at half past four, when the mowers'
bottles have to
be filled and the baking started, and with its weekly rhythm
for the Sabbath. The clock is a monument not to time merely
as time, but the assured and saving values stored up through
ages of experience. The pace of Adam Bede is therefore set to
[·h's Po y s c r ' s clock, to all the slow toil and patient discipline
that have made daylight and living valuable.

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241
Mrs Poyser1s clock at the Hall
Farm, the clock
which has sublimated all
time into good, is set for daylight
saving.
It has the "excellent habit" of "taking time by the
forelock" (43). Not so the clocks of the gentlefolk at the
Chase.
It is because Adam Bede is the story of the irreparable
damage wrought on the community by a private moment1s frivo-
lity, that we do not wonder at the focus on watches and dials
and especially Mrs Poyser1s clock. Throughout that Thursday
when Arthur meets Hetty in the wood twice, the clock is wat-
ched irritably.
It is "about ten o'clock" when Arthur, time
irritable and bored on his hands, goes to the stables; the
"twelve o'clock sun" sees him galloping toward Norborne to
see a friend but Hetty is on his mind; and "the hand of the
dial
in the courtyard had scarcely cleared the last stroke of
three" whe n he is waiting at the gate of the wo od . Hetty comes
daily to learn lace mending of Mrs Pompret, the maid at the
I1
"
Chase, at four o'clock, and she tells Arthur that she always
set sou t for the far m" bye i ght 0 1 cl 0 c k". Tf1 eye xc han ge a
look:
"vJhat a space of time those three moments were, while
their eyes met and his arms touched her !". Arthur meditates
i r res 0 1ut e 1y "m0 r (~ t ha n a n h0 u r" 0 nth e f a 1 s e imp res s ion he
feels he has created in the girl; but the~time must be filled
up 1', and he d res se s for din ne r, "f 0 r his 9 ran d- fat her I sdi nner-
h0 ur VIass i x" (4 4)
; me a n\\1/ hi 1 e Het t y too i 5 Wa t chi n9 the c 1 0 c k ,
and at last "the minute-hand of the old-fashioned brazen-faced
timepiece wa s on the last quarter of eight".
In the shadows
of the wo od he kisses her. Then he pulls out his watch:
"I
wonder how late it is ... twenty minutes past eight - but my

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242
watch is too fast"
(45). Back at the farm, Mrs Payser exclaims,
"l~hat a time o'night time this is to come home, Hetty ...
Look at the clock, do ; why,
it's going on for half-past
nine, and live sent gells to bed this half-hour, and late
enough
too ... "
"I did set out before eight, aunt", said Hetty, in a pet-
tish tone, with a slight toss of her head.
" But this
clock's so much
before the clock at the Chase, there's
no telling what time it'll
be when I get here.
"What! You'd be wanting the clock set by gentle-folks's
time, would you? an' sit up burnin'
candle, ani
lie a-bed
wi'
the sun a - bakin' you like a cowcumber i'
the frame?
The clock hasn't been put forrard for the first time to-day
I reckon" (.46).
Slower, organically, invisibly slow, are the months
of Hetty's pregnancy; the Paysers' clock, the clock at the
Chase, do not keep this time, with their eights, nines and half
past nines. This other, deep, hidden, animal
time drags the
whole pace do wn tot hat 0 f poor Het t y "s "j 0 urn ey i n des pair 11 ,
a blind automatism of animal
night where the ticking of the
human clock cannot be heard.
In fact, the massy line of the book is deflected to-
ward the end. By Mrs Payser's clock, Hetty's last-minute reprie-
ve cannot really be timed with a time integral
to the rest of
the novel, nor can Ad arn ' s marri age wi th Di na h , or Arthur 's i 11-

---

Notes on
'Structure and Form'
Adam Bede
I - Miriam Allot. Novelists on the novel : "Struchural problems"
--
Tolstoy Routlegde, Paperback London 1965
(1975)
P.
235
2. Mirian Allot, op. cit Henry James P.
235
3. Adam Bede ch 3 P.
45
4 • Ibid, ch 5 P.
72
5.
Ibid, ch 5
6.
Ibid, ch 26 P. 273
7.
Ibid, ch 14 P.P.
144
8.
Ibid, ch IS P.P. 144, 5
9.
Ibid, ch 33 p.• 336
10.
Ibid,
ch 53 P.
496
II.
Ibid, ch 30 P.
310
12.
Ibid,
ch 18 P.
194
13.
Ibid, ch 21 P. 227
14.
Ibid,
ch 12 P. 132
IS.
Ibid,
ch 20 P.
213
16.
Ibid,
ch 20 P.
213
17.
Ibid,
ch 7 P.
91
18.
Ibid,
ch 7 p.
90
':: --,
19.
Ibid, ch 25 P. 265
20.
Ibid,
ch 31 P.
324
2I.
Ibic1,
ch 31 P.
325
22.
Ibid,
ch IS P.
ISO
23.
Ibid,
ch 31 P.
319
24.
Ibid,
ch 31 P.
320
25.
Ibid, ch 31 P. 320
26.
Ibid,
ch
37 P.
370

---

27.
Ibid ch 37 P. 360
28.
Ibid, ch 34 P. 343
29.
Ibid, ch 45 P. 431
30.
Ibid, ch 45 P. 409
31.
Ibid,
ch 45 P. 428
32.
Ibid,
ch 19 P. 206
33.
Ibid,
ch 19 P. 206
34.
Ibid, ch 39
35.
Ibid,
ch 42
36.
Ibid, ch 8 P. 96
37.
Ibid,
ch 54 P. 499
38.
Ibid ch 52 P. 479
39.
Ibid ch 52 p'.
481
40.
Ibid ch 54 499 P.
41.
Ibid ch 55 P. 501
42.
Ibid ch 18
43 Ibid, ch 18 P. 190
44.
Ibid,
ch 12
45.
Ibid,
ch 13
46.
Ibid,
ch 14 P. 146
47. Mirian Allot, Ope cit. P. 245

---

~
u
Notes on Structure and Form :'The
Mill on the Floss'
I - The Mill on the Floss Bk V, ch 7 p.P.
371-3
2.
Ibid,
VII,
5
,
P.
545

---

243
health, for they are no real
"illumination" of the tragedy
of Hetty. They are the artificial
illumination which so many
Victorian novels indulged in, in the effort to justify to man
God's ways or society's ways or nature's ways. Yet, there
still remains the ticking of the oak-cased clock, rubbed
\\\\
by human
elbow-polish", that paces the book through its
greater part: the realization of value, clean as the clock-
tick, radiant as the kitchen of the Hall
Farm, fragrant as
the dairy; and the tragic realization of the loss of human
values however simple, in Hetty's abandoned foot-steps as
she seeks the dark pool and caresses her own arms in the
desire for life.
Adam Bede is built round two kinds of focus, but
these are, unhappily, often too explicit where absolute dis-
cretion is of fundamental
necessity for their fully artistic
realization.
11 - THE MILL ON THE FLOSS -
The Mill on the Flo~~ is no less rich in structural
intentions. Like Adam Bede, The Mill on the Flo~~ has its focus.
Naturally, it is directed on some specific characteristics which
the main figures present and share. And,
like in Adam Bede,
but in a different way,
the focus is directed on the movement
of the novel. After dissecting the novel and verifying the
soundness and fitness of the different parts, we shall
look at
the novel as a whole to appreciate its form.

---

244
1 •
The two 1e a din g c ha r act e I' i s tic s 0 f a 1In0 s tal 1 the
personages to whom we are introduced are honesty and pugna-
city, and these flow from one and the same source.
A strong character, such as is here described, that
feels its own strength, delights in it, and is proud of it v
is honest, because dishonesty is a weakness not because it is
an injury to others. The Dodson family are stingy, selfish
wretches, who give no sympathy and require none, who would
let a neighbour starve and let a brother be bankrupt when a
very little assistance would save him from the disgrace; but
they would" not touch a penny that is not theirs, there is
no legal act which they would not discharge, they would scorn
the approach of a lie. They would be truthful and honest, not
as a social duty, but as
personal
pride - because nobody should
have it in his or her power to say that they were weak enough
to neglect a manifest obligation.
From the same source of self-satisfied strength
comes pugnacity i r. all
its forms of rivalry and contradiction,
jealousies and criticisms, lawsuits, and slanders, and blows.
everybody in this novel
is repelling everybody, and life is,
in the strictest sense, a battle.
Even the good angel of the
story, that little Maggie, who is full
of affection and whose
affection is continually leading her into blunders and mis-
f 0 I' tun e s , i s fir s t 0 f
all
i nt I' 0 duc e d t 0 us wh i 1e she i sin du1-
q i n9 a nun na t u r Cl 1 fer 0 c i t Y tow Cl r dshe r doll, \\'1h0 s e he ads he i s

---

punching .- driving a nail
into it. Her brother Tom, wh o is
the next important character in the small
community, is
chiefly remilrkable for self-assertion and hard-headed resis-
tance of fate - his strong wrestling with adversity, and his
anxiety to punish the slightest offence.
Her father, Mr Tulliver,
is pugnacity incarnate.
This life of proud self-assertion that on the bad
side presents itself as
incessant bickering, and on the best
side appears as a devotion to justice and truth for selfish
ends, may become interesting by being made heroic. But Eliot
has attempted a more difficult task. She takes these charac-
ters as we find them in real
life - in all
their intrinsic
littleness. She paints them as she finds them - snapping at
each other over the tea-table, eying each other enviously
at church; privately plotting how to astonish each other
by some extraordinary display; putting the worst construction
on every word
and act; officiously proffering advice
and
predicting calamity; living with perfect content their sordid
life of vulgar respectability.
The first half of the novel
is d2voted to the exhi-
bition of this degraded species of existence, which is dissec-
ted with a masterly hand. Although it is the least exciting
part of the work, it is the part of which the reader will
carry away the most vivid recollection. The author has reso-
lutely set herself the task of delineating without exaggeration,
\\'1 i t h0 u t
e xten ua t ion, wit h III i nut e a c cur a cy, the S 0 r t 0 f 1 i f e
which her country men lead.

---

246
It is difficult to describe adults leading a purely
bestial
life of vulgar respectability without rendering the
picture simply repulsive. But the life of children is essen-
tially an animal
life. Ce o r qe Eliot relieves the repulsiveness
of the insect life which she has exhibited in the Dodson Fami-
ly by making her bigger insects
evolve around these two
little creatures, Maggie and Tom Tulliver. She paints child-
hood in all
its prosaic reality, and with the most amusing
fidelity.
She describes the envies, and cruelties, and gluton-
nies that in men would be revolting, but are only grotesque
in these funny little animals.
In the latter half of the novel, Maggie and Tom have
ceased to be children; and here, also, we cease to be oppres-
sed as before with that intolerable Dodson Family, who are
likely to have a proud pre-eminence in fiction as the most
thorny set of people ever introduced into George Eliot's tales.
2 .
This novel
is the least progressive of all
George
Eliot1s studies in character and morality.
It is possible to describe Maggie's progress in the diagram-
matic form of such an ascent:
her childhood is marked by
the habit of creative and drugging fantasy, by the need to
be loved and admired, by r'e c k l e s s ne s s and absent-mindedness,
by Pr i cl c a ncl mi:J S 0 chi S In ; she m0 vest 0 In 0 res ub t 1y e f f e c t i ve
fantasies
in art and religion; her need to be loved and

---

---

247
admired is controlled and subdued, and modified by her need
to argue her values, she softens her pride; bu.f\\hhe final
stage) the weakness of her masochistic and unreal
religiosity,
her recklessness and dreaminess are finally triumphed over in
the rennunci&tion of Stephen : Maggie emerges from illusion
and self-love. This account of her process is the more dis-
torting for being faithfully close to the climaxes of the
novel. What happens, however, is that the climaxes are reached
and then denied. Maggie ascends and descends.
It is a process
more like an eddy than a directing current. The web is com-
plex ; just when Maggie seems to be most enticed by the old
voice 11 that made sweet mu s i c ? ,
Eliot shows that the relation
with Philip is made up of rennunciation as well as
indulgence.
At each step of' apparent progress, when Maggie says most-confi-
dently, III have made up my mi nd ? ,
she is shown, very qui e t l y ,
as moving back on her word. This eddying process shows itself
not only in each detail
of apparent change, but throughout
the whole broad pattern of growing up. The Maggie who pushed
Lucy into the mud, who ran away, who
used her doll as a scape-
goat, who cut off her hair, who wanted to give Tom the bigger
half of the jam-puff and immediately forgot his
existence in
de v0 ur i ng i t t his t1 a 99 i e i s s t ill
Pres e ntin the old e r Ma gg i e ,
with adult appetites, adult control over trivial acts, and
adult lack of control over grave acts. Her experience changes
she finds that rennunciatioTl is hard und destructive, but her
ch a r act e I' i s not t ran s for Ine d by t his d i S co V e r y.
S0 ~ a 1t h0 u9h
the notion of Maggie's character is dynamic, it is no case of
progress.

---

240
The stubborn and unchanging nature of character is
shown dynamically, not statically, and the whole psychologi-
cal notation of the novel
keeps us in touch with mobility
and complexity. This stubbornness is seen outside Maggie,
for instance, in Tom
and perhaps most movingly in Mr
Tulliver. One of the finest examples, I think, comes in the
two adjacent scenes, which show Mr Tulliver's recovery after
his stroke. One marks a crisis of change, the other undercuts
and makes an almost cancelling movement:
When he was seated at table with his creditors, his eye
kindling and his cheek flushed with the consciousness
that he was about to make an honourable figure once more,
he looked more like the proud, confident, warm-hearted,
and warm-tempered Tulliver of old times than
might have
seemed possible to anyone who had met him a week before,
riding along, as had been his wont for the last four years
since the sense of failure and debt had been upon him, with
his head hanging down, casting brief, unwilling looks on
those who forced themselves on his notice. He made his
speech, asserting his honest principles with this old
confident eagerness, alluding to the rascals and the luck
that had been against him but that triulnphed over to some
extent by hard efforts and the aid of a good son; and
winding up with the story of how Tom Ilad got the best part
of the needful money. But the streak of irritation and hos-
tile triumph seemed to melt for a little while into purer
fatherly pride and pleasure

---

249
The party broke up in very sober fashion at five
o'clock ... and Mr Tulliver mounted his horse to go home and
describe the memorable things that had been said and done, to
"poor Bessy and the little wench". The air of excitement that
hung about him was but faintly due to the good cheer or any
stimulus but the potent wine of triumphant joy. He did not
choose any back street today, but rode slowly, with uplifted
head and free glances, along the principal street all the
way of the bridge. Why did he not happen to meet Wakem ? The
want of that coincidence vexed him and set his mind at work
in an irritating way.
Perhaps Wakem was gone out of town
today on purpose to avoid seeing or hearing anything of an
honourable action which might well cause him some unpleasant
twinges ...
Simmering in this way, Mr Tulliver approached the
yard-gates of Dorlcote Mill, near enough to see a well-known
figure coming out of them on a fine black horse. They met
about fifty yards from the gates, between the great chestnuts
and elms and the high bank.
"Tulliver", said \\'Jakem abruptly in a haughtier tone
than usual, "wh a t a fool IS trick you did - spreading those hard
lumps on that Fa r Close.
I told you how it would be, but you
men never 'learn to farm with any method".
"Oh !II said Tu l l i ve r , suddenly boiling up.
IIGet somebody else
to fa r In for you, t he n , a sill
ask {fO U to tea ch him".

---

250
" You ha ve bee n d r ink -j n9, I sup [J0 S € '", s aid l~ a kem, rea 11y
believing that this was the meaning of Tulliver's flushed
face and sparkling eyes.
"No,
I've not been drinking", said Tulliver, 111 want no drinking
to help me make up my mind as
I'll serve no longer under' a
scoundrel ll •
"Very well! You may leave my premises t omo r r ow ; then, hold
your insolent tongue and let me pa s s ".
(Tulliver was backing
his horse accross the road to hem Wakem in).
"No , I -6hal1't let you pass", said Tulliver, getting fiercer.
111 shall
tell you what I think of you first.
You're too big
a raskill to get hanged, you're - 11
IILet me pass, you ignorant brute, or I'll
ride over yo u".
Mr Tulliver, spurring his horse and raising his whip, made
a rush forward, and Wakem's horse, rearing and staggering
backward, threw his rider from the saddle and sent him side-
ways on the ground. Wakem had had the presence of mind to loose
the bridle at once, and as the horse only staggered a few paces
and then stood still, he might have risen and remounted with-
out more inconvenience than a bruise and a shake. But before
he could rise, Tulliver was off his horse too. The sight
of the long-hated predominant ma n down and in his power' t h r e w
hinl into a frenzy of triumphant vengeance which seemed to
give him preternatural agility and strength.
He rushed on
VI a ke111, '.',how as i nth e act 0 f t l'.vi n9 tor c c 0 ver his fee t , gr as -
pe d hi 111 by the 1eft cl r m s 0 a s top I' e s s hi a kP 111 I S whole \\'Je i 9h t

---

251
on the right arm, which rested on the ground, and flogged
him fiercely accross the back with his riding-whip. Wakem
shouted for help, but no help came (2).
3.
The Mill on the Flo~~ has a unity in imagery, as
demonstrated elsewhere in this work, but it does not prepare
us for the par t pl aye d by the r i ve r i n rea chi n9 the con c 1us fa n
and solving the problem. What we are prepared for is the
struggle between the energetic human spirit and a limited
and limiting society: such struggles are not settled by
floods.
The flood is the Providence of the novel.
It would
not be quite true to say that religion is rushed in at the
end without being earlier involved with action and character.
The community of St Oggs is most carefully analysed as a
I
mixed pagan and Christian society, and a very large number
of the characters
is placed in religious tradition, belief
and feeling. Maggie's religious experiencE is central to
the novel, but I do not think it prepares us for the miracu-
lous aura, however del~cately adjusted, which surrounds her
in the last pages. The chief defect - indeed, the only serious
defect - in The Mill on the Flo~~ is its conclusion.
Such a conclusion is in itself assuredly
not illegitimate,
and there is nothing in the fact of the flood, to my mind,

---

252
essentially unnatural:
I object to its relation to the
preceding part of the story. The story is told as if it were
destined to have, if not a strictly happy ending, at least
one within ordinary abilities. As it stands, the denouement
shocks the reader most painfully. Nothing has prepared him
for it ; the story does not move towards it~ it casts no
shadow before it. Did such a denouement lie within the author's
intentions from the first, or was it a tardy expedient for
the solution of Maggie1s difficulties? This question the
reader asks himself, but of course, he asks it in vain. The
)
ending of The Mill on the Flo~~ {~ religious or quasi-re1i-
gious, and is marked by a strong emotional crescendo which
betrays the uncontrolled urge to reach an end. George Eliot
kills off Tom and Maggie, bringing them through the waters
of the flood into each other1s arms:
there is the triumphant
feeling after all that pain, and the triumphant discovery
of meaning. The novel ends with a double Eureka feeling
the final embrace of the loved-one and the final
vision of
meaning. Tom Tu11iver at last sees (and Maggie sees that
he sees) lithe depths in life, that had lain beyond his vision
which he had fancied so keen and c1ear" (3). The imagery
of blindness and good vision is there as in each novel).
Whether we see the novel as an imitation of reality or as an
expressive form of creating virtual experience, it seems to
fail
for a good reason:
the solutions and conclusions are
so visibly needed by the artist, not by the tale. Thus, this
novel is an instance of technique acting, not as discovery
hut as obscurin~ fantasy.

---

2t) ~l
• , ,..I
What turns a great psychological
novel
into a
Providence novel
at the end is not simply the magical coinci-
den ce 0 f Pray era nd a ns It, e r i nth e "wate r f low i ngun de r her"
it is the appearance of exactly the wrong kind of problem-
solving.
Throughout the novel
have been established two chief impli-
cations in the action and relationships - implications which
at times rise into explicit formulation
one, that II c h a r a c t e r
i s des tin y - but not en t ire 1y SOil, Wh i ch em phas i ze s not 0 n1y
social determinism and large human influence, but the sheer
chanciness of life
the other, that lithe highest election
and calling is to do without o pi unr'", a belief central to
Eliot's rejection of Christianity which remained with her
all
her lif~. It is all her novels; and it seems to be the
standard by which maturity is described and measured in Th~
Mill on th~ Flo~~.
1\\1aggie's 'process'
is, as we have remarked, more
complex than any extracted pattern, but one of the strands
in the extracted pattern must be her rejection of the opiates
of day-dream, literature, and religion. When she is able to
make no dream-world any more, and when literary dream-worlds
fa i 1 her, she fin ds a n e wan d sub t ly
e f f e c t i ve d r LJ gin the
religion of self-denial. Philip - and the novel IS course -
make it plain to her that she is now substituting another
harder fantasy for the older fragile ones. She acts her
r c nu nc i a t t ons , and Ph i l t p ' s prophesies, wh i l e the novel's
course reveals that she has fallen into the fantasy of choo-
sin 9 !" C 11 U ne i Cl t ion s - li t t 1e 0 ne S Vi hie h VI ill not hur t too
mu c h . The final
e x pc r i cn cc is the lengthy pa i nf ul ne s s of

---

254
renunciation, and by making her go through it a second time.
She dramatizes, most movingly, the difference between giving
up passion in passion and giving it up in deprivation. George
Eliot is showing implicitly what she made Philip tell
Maggie
explicitly :that renunciation hurts; that pain is unplea-
sant ; and deprivation is destructive. But what really offends
our regard for aesthetic unity is Maggie's bad faith that
contrasts too strongly with the authenticity of everything
that comes before. She gives Maggie
rewards
and triumphs after
all, not just by answering the despairing prayer, but by taking
her to Tom and allowing her, before they drown together, to
see that change of vision in his eyes. The novel has been
about living without fantasy and opiate, and ends with a
combination of several strong fantasies. There is the fantasy
of death, the fantasy of reconciliation, and the fantasy of
being finally righted and understood. This novel
is sharply
divided into realism and fantasy.
Character is the backbone of The Mill on the Flo~~
imagery, the harmonious substance of its body. But the whole
thing is disastrously diformed towards and by, its end.
This blot, however, represents nothing in comparison with
the great improvement we note here in George Eliot's structure.
Indeed, the focuss
here is
as quiet as can be. This impli-
citness is a step towards maturity.

---

George Eliot1s later novels are complex. They
attempt to embrace a broad diversity of characters and
events; and it is not obvious what, if anything, she consi-
ders to be the unifying principle that should bring all
the
parts together into a unified whole. Henry James finds
Middfe.nWlLc.h a "treasure-house of details, but ... an indif-
ferent whole" (1). F.R. Leavis in the Great Tradition (2)
is willing to cut away the "bad part" of Val1ie.t Ve.lLonda and
allow the story of Gwendolen to stand by itself. These views
are not untrue. To my mind, they simply lack penetration.
For only a hasty survey of George Eliot1s works can give
that impression of independent segments within the novel.
But if one looks closer at these segments and then steps
back to consider them as a whole, then, before one's eyes,
will suddenly emerge a multitude of artistic intentions, a
richness of design, in the purpose of the unity of the book.
Let us now examine the first of her later novels
Mi ddf e.m alLc.h .
III - MIDDLEMARCH -
In
MiddlcmafLc.h,
George Eliot has come a long way
fro m the m0 reo r 1e s sob vi 0 uS 11 r e 1a t ion s hip 11 be tw e enS ton y s hi l~ e
and Loarn s h ire.
I n
Mt dclC('.111 (Ut c.h,
the rea del' i s 0 f fer e d 1 i t t 1e
help: he must establish the relations as best as he can.
In other words, the relation of Hetty Sorrel and Dinah Morris
is made explicit; the relation of Casaubon and Lydgate is
not.
In her l o tc r fiction, Ge o r qe Eliot moves from easy and

---

explicit relations to obscure and implicit ones.
The Prelude i nt r oduc e s St Theresa and "later-born
lh ere sas"
; but the PI' e 1ude con c 1udes \\'Ji t h0 uta ny word 0 f
advice on how it is related to the story of Dorothea Brooke
which follows. The relationships between these two human lots
develops stealthily in the novel; and the relationship is
confirmed only in the Finale, where the "many Theresas" of
the Prelude become" Dorotheas".
Gut a long way before we come to the Finale, we
wonder, while the earlier chapters unfold themselves, what
form the story is to take - that of an organised, moulded, ba-
lanced composition, gratifying the reader with a sense of
design and construction, or a mere chain of episodes, broken
into accidental lengths and unconscious of the influence of
a plan.
It so happens that the more we progress in our pe-
rusal, the more we develop the conviction that in Middlema~ch
there is no plan.
But if there is no plan, there is no confusion. The
"three love-problems" are he l d firmely in hand. Dorothea and
Lydgate, the Garth and the Vincy families, meet and part,
they pair and quarrel, they suffer and resign themselves, in
what the author calls an "embroiled medium". The busy idleness
of AUddLC.III{(tLch, its trades, its politics, its vestry meetings,
and its nc i 9hb0 U I' i n9 111 a gnate s , 0 n1y f 0 r m the ba c k9I' 0 U nd t 0
the three s pi r i t ua l conflicts, the scenery among which three

---

souls spend some eventful years in working out their salva-
tion and their nc i q hbou r s ", or in effecting w-ith equal
labour,
something less than salvation for both. The story of these
conflicts and struggles is the thread which unites the whole,
and sympathy with its incidents is the force that reconciles
the reader to the unusual
strain upon his intellectual facul-
ties. But the question still
remains: how far do these three
stories form the unity of the book, or more precisely how
does George Eliot connect and relate the different parts of
Mlddlema~ch to make of it an organic whole.
Obviously, a work of the liberal
scope of Mlddlema~ch
is likely to contain a multitude of artistic intentions, in
terms of the unity of the book.
I think that the sole and unique unifying principle in Mlddle-
ma~ch is the principle of analogy, which is thoroughly and
exhaustively exploited. Here G~orge Eliot presses the reader
to find relationships among the most seemingly disconnected
events and unrelated characters. Now, how is this made mani-
fest in the novel
is to be our main concern.
If we look at IdlddlC'.maJ1.ch through the pr-ism of
vocation, then we realize what an important part the stories
of Lydgate and Dorothea play in the structure of the novel.
Both have a similar brand of idealism operating in the diffe-
rent spheres of social
reform and scientific research.
Both
a I' e s i mi 1a I' 1Y "p 1ace d"
:
Do}' 0 the a i s t 0
Sa; n t
The r e s a \\'Jhat
Lydgate is to Vesalius. 80th are frustrated in their vocation

---

250
by a combination of mil ieu and individual failings - in Lyd-
gate's case his"spots of commonness", in Dorothea1s her "too
the 0 re tic a 1 na tu I' c ". AI' 0 und the set \\AJ 0, s t ill
i nth e 1 i ght 0 f
vocation, cluster other characters. Casanbon's perversion
of scholarship ends in a sterile parody of the real thing
Fred Vincy, urged to take holy orders avoids choosing a voca-
tion that would be the wrong one for him; the Reverend Fare-
brother, who has done what Fred avoids doing but who, never-
theless, makes a decent job of his wrong choice and
,there-
fore is pre-eminently the man to advise Fred ; Will Ladislaw
is the man with no vocation at all, who dwindles
from being
a dilettante artist into a political journalist and ends up,
unconvincingly, as a philanthropist. However, when we read the
novel, we are concerned primarily with the relationship of
each of these characters to the others, not with the relation-
ship all of them to an imaginary thematic centre. What emerges
is a set of variations, and it is not in any abstract statement)
but in a richly depicted and subtly discriminated body of life
that the strength of the novel
lies.
Now, if we take the novel
under the aspect of aspi-
ration, we find out that Casanbon and Lydgate, who have very
little to do with each other in the plot, are related by the
analogy that both are searching for a kind of "primitive tissue"
- Ca sa nb0 n IS" ke.Y to il 11 t1 Yt h0 10 gi e s ", LYdgat c I s me di ca 1 re -
search.
In the same way, Rosamond Viney a nd Madame Laure, who
ha ve not h i ng \\',11 i1 t eve r to d0 VI i the a C hot her "j nth e pl ot , a I' e
related by t ho a na l oqy t ha t both a r e like a kind of basil plant

---

which flourishes on a murdered manls brains: Madame Laure
murders her husband for her own convenience, Rosamond forces
Lydgate to give up his research and so~kiilsv the scientist.
In the way of human lots, we have the destinies of
Featherstone and Casanbon converging. They have next to nothing
to do with each .other in the plot, but both die without having
been able to deliver up their writings to the world in a deci-
sive form:
Featherstone while clasping the key to the chest
containing his two wills; Casanbon after having exhausted
himself on a work that is still
in note-books.
Again, Lydgatels and Dorothea's stories are those of two rather
sad fatalities, of two lives which, starting with more than
ordinary promise, had to content themselves with very ordinary
achievement, and could not derive unmixed consolation from the
knowledge, which was the chief prize of their struggles, that
failure is never altogether undeserved. The two failures, hdwe-
in common but their irrevocable necessity.
Lydgate does not b~come thoroughly intelligible. till the last
chapter has b.een read" in connection with the first:
then he
appears as a masculine counterpart to Dorothea with the relative
proportions of head and heart reversed.
(From one point of
view, Dorotheals failure is the most tragic~ for while Lydgate
was drawn back by concrete human infirmity, the fault in Doro-
tllea's case seems to be altogether in the nature and constitu-
tion of the universe, her devotion and purity of intention are
altogether beautiful, even when, for lack of knowledge, they
\\
a r (' e xpen de cl i n Itl h(. t see ms t 0 bet he Vfran 9 p1ace, but i t
i s
a sad reflection thi1[ their beaut.y must always rest on a basis
of illusion be c a us e t he r e is no right place f o r their bestowal).

---

2GU
Another unifying feature in this novel
is that
each serious character has a serious delusion. Dorothea
believes that she can do good through learning; Lydgate
thinks that the demands of science are compatible with those
.that Middlemarch makes of its physicians; Mr Casanbon nourishes
the illusion that marriage
with a beautiful and passionate
young girl will bring him pleasure and repose; Bulstrode
entertains the idea that he can make an inward moral
restitu-
tion for the act of misappropriating his original fortune.
~
Middlemanch indeed emphasizes George Eliot1s observa-
tion about the medium in wh i ch her characters move:
lilt is
the habit of my imagination to strive after as full
a vision
of the medium in which the character moves as of the character
itself ll (3).
Middlemarch authorizes an extension of this principle. George
Eliot has created a common medium which completely immerses
most of the characters; for it is an oppressive provincial
I
town.
It is hard indeed to conceive how an individual can
on this scene really originate anything. Dorothea's wide charity
finds no direct express"ion ; Lydgate's scientific interest in
the . t 0 \\v n Ish e a 1t h me e t s b1a nkin C 0 mpre hen s ion and e f f e c t i ve
resistance, not only from all
ranks in the medical hierarchy
but from almost every element in the town, the oppressiveness
i s
of 1·1 i dd1e marc hVt hus the ba sic sou r ce 0 f f r us t rat ion 0 f the
main figures.
In other terms, all these frustrations have Middle-
march for a common denominator. hence a sense of unity.

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261
Still, Ge o r qe Eliot's special success in M-<,cldz.cmatle-h
is an extraordinary economy of means, for it appears when we
look closely that the matter of the book is people's opinions
about one another, and this particular method consists in contri-
ving scenes in which the disparity between the intentions of
agents and tile opinions of observers is dramatically exhibited.
This consistency of method accounts in its own way fOt' our
sense of the unity of a book which embraces a whole social or-
der, and at least three principal stories.
What Eliot surveys is a land-scape of opinion, for
it is not the natural
landscape that is dominant here. We have
moved a step further into abstraction from the landscapes in
Adam B~d~,
and those in Th~ Miz.z. on th~ Fz.o~~.
In fact, there
are only two fully realized natural
landscapes, Lowick Manor
and Stone Court, and in these cases the landscape is realized
by an individual whose situation and interests make him aware
of an external world at that particular moment. For the most
part,we may characterize the book's use of the physical world
by referring to Eliot's own sense of Warwickshire as a physical
locale which has been wholly humanized, and to the Reverend
Cad\\y all a del' "s ha 1f - s e I' i 0 uS I' e ma r k t hat i t i s a vel' y g0 0 d q ua -
lity in a man to have a trout stream. This transposition of
the natural
into the moral and psychological
is further illus-
trated by the novelist's use of snatches of poetry - Dorothea
Brooke's hope f o r social betterment "haunted her like a pas-
s ion" - and Ive may s ay t hat the a f fee ti 0 nate s e TI s e 0 f na t ure
and the objects that man makes and handles which suffuses

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262
Adam Bede has been deliberately subdued here.
Nothing com-
parable to the description of Hetty Sorrel
in Mrs Payser's
dairy can enter into MLdclt'emCLlLc./L. ~Jot because it is a more
"intellectual" book, but because its immediacies are not
things seen but things felt and believed.
It is striking that
we know almost nothing of the appearance of Middlemarch itself,
although our sense of the life of the town as a community
is very full
indeed, ranging as it does from a pet-house to
the Gre enD rag 0 n, the tow n I s be s tin n , fro 01 h0 r se - de ale r s ,
auctioneers, and grocers to the lawyers, physicians, merchants~
clergymen, and landowners. Although we see little of the acti-
vities of all these people we hear their voices, each pitched
to the
tone
of its own desire, e3ch capable of dropping
suggestively our rising assertion on grounds which George
Eliot shows to be wholly inadequate when related to the facts
of the particular case.
Chapter 45 is a good example of the masterly way in
which George Eliot can demonstrate the drifts and swirls of
opinion through the town.
In this account of various responses
to Lydgate's principled refusal
to dispense drugs himself, each
of the voices establishes a character so fully and with such
economy that it is hard to believe that Mawmsey the grocer,
and Mrs Dallop of the Tankard have not always been known to
us.
Yet this single chapter does much more.
In it we learn
that the clouds of misapprehension and selfishness gatheriny
about Lydgate cannot possibly be dispelled, that he is more

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'1 f' '\\
t. J.j
than likely to run into debt, and that his wife's awful
insu1a-
rity will resist his earnest and even his desperate attempts
to penetrate it. t'1uch e a r Ti e r , that is, in chapter 15, Eliot
had used her author's privilege to warn the reader of all
these possibilities.
"For surely all must admit that a man
may be puppet and be1awded, envied, ridiculed, counted upon
as a tool and fallen in love with, or at least selected as a
future husband, and yet remain virtually unknown - known wereby
as a cluster of signs for his neighbours·
false supposition"
(4). The author, writing of Middlema4~h, says
"l wanted to
give a panoramic view of provincial
life
11
(5), but what
she does give is something far more active, far more in accord
with the image of the web - as perhaps a vast switchboard in
which every si~na1 is interpreted differently by each receiver,
and each receiver is in its turn capable of propagating in
response a signal of its own with equally dissonant consequen-
ces. Yet in the end, roughly but surely, the dissonances die
out and a concensus of sort emerges.
Some of George Eliot's devices to enforce her view
of the landscape of opinion are transparently set before the
reader's eyes: young Fred Vincy has long held expectations
based on old Featherstone's will.
Featherstone who lives to
torment his relatives, teases Fred about a story that he has
been trying to borrow money on post-obits. Fred is instructed
to get a letter from the stiff-necked Bulstrode to the effect
that this is not true. O"ld Fcatherstone is here made to demand
of Fred Vincy morc than Gu1strode's testimony as to the fact;

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264
What he provides in fact is an occasion in which Fred is
envisioned by another man - an account of one facet of his
social being. The imaginative coherence of Middlemarch can
be seen on many levels; on this instance old Featherstone's
demand is the counter-part of what chiefly obsesses his last
months: the effect that another document, his will, will
produce on those who survive him. His opinion incidentally
will emerge when his last will
is read, and it will comfort
no one on the Middlemarch scene. Fred, meanwhile, is buoyed
up by an opinion generally held that he will
inherit from
old Featherstone
l'In fact, tacit expectations of what would
be done for him by Uncle Featherstone determined the angle at
which most people viewed Fred Vincy in Middlemarch ; a~d
in his own cons~iousness,
what Uncle Featherstone would do
for him in an emergency, or what he would do simply as
an incorporated luck, formed always an immeasurable depth
of aerial pe r s pe c t t ve " (6).
All
the characters thus evolve in the landscape of opinion.
We must admit that there is nothing like gossip and opinion
to connect characters and give a community a sense of unity.
If analogy and common medium are the most exploited
devices in the service of the unity of the book,
I think that
the plotting does not make a lesser contribution. As a matter
of fact, the plot of t.fiddfr_t!IcuccIL is carefully, exhaustively
contrived. One, or more, of the characters in each of the
four stories plays an important part in each of the other
three. This is done for the unity of the book. But I cannot
res i s t 1i s tin g he}'e , \\'J i t h r e 9a r d tot he pl ot , s 0 IIIe 0 f the

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2UJ
occasions for sympathetic concern In this novel
VIe
wonder
how will Dorothea awake to a consciousness of the meaning
of her marriage to the pedantic Casanbon ? Will
Fred Vincy
inherit old Featherstonels money? Failing that, will he
re c 1a i m him s elf and 111 a r r y r~ a r y Gart h , 0 I' Will Far e brot her
cut him 0 ut? Wi 1" R0 s am0 nd I slit 0 r pe doe 0 nt act"
par a 1y se her
vigorous husband, Lydgate ? Can he
succeed in medical practice
,in the face of the bigotry of Middlemarch ? Can he extricate
himself from his debt? HoVl will
Bulstrode be found out, and
wh a t
will happen to him and h-is wife? Will
Lydgate eventually
fall
in love with Dorothea ? And so forth ...
~1 i dd 1emarc h i nde e d is" a t rea sur e - h0 use 0 f deta i 1s " ,
but with its analogies, its common medium and its plot as
unifying principles.
It is really hard to see it as an lIoindif-
ferent whole".
IV - DANIEL DERONDA -
The main new features f,fJ.ddlC?))]CULC.f1 exhibits are the
inter-weaving of concurrent stories, and the movement from
easy and explicit relations to obscure and implicit ones.
Here, in our author's last novel, we find that i mp l i c i t ne s s
further developed.
VCUl{ CC DriLe It da p res e n t s t w0 hum a n lot s - Dani e 1
De r-o nda ' s a nd Gwc ndol e n Ha r l c th t s - running t h r ouqh the novel
almost completely independent of e a c h ot he r .

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266
The two characters exchange glances in the first scene, part,
are not introduced to each other until
Book IV ~hapter XXIX,
and at the conclusion have parted f o r e ve r , But once again ana-
logy is the unifying principle of the novel.
Indeed, what
makes the two stories a "wholeness" is the complex of analo-
gi c a 1 re 1 a t ion s bet \\., e e nth em. Bot h 0ani e 1 and G\\1end 0 1e n are
searching for a duty to submit to. Deronda finds his in his
Jewish heritage; Gwendolen finds something less precise.
However, we must recognize that by so reducing the interrela-
tions in the plot itself, Eliot has pressed the principle of
unity by analogy to an extreme. This will also account for
our not being expansive on that aspect which is deprived of
the richness it exhibits in Middlema~ch.
Now, we shall examine Vaniel Ve~onda as a new and
the final
phase of George El{ot's work .
.
There are both blemishes and beauties in Vaniel
Ve~onda which belong exclusively to this work.
No book of
George Eliot's before this has ever appeared so laboured, and
sometimes even so forced and feeble, in its incidental remarks.
None of the books we have yet examined does include so many
original mottoes prefixed
to the chapters which, instead
of increasing our admiration for the book, rather overweight
and perplex it. None of the books which precede this one has
ever contained so little humour. NO,doubt the r e a de r feels
the difference in all these respects between Daniel Ve~onda
and Middtema~ch.

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257
On the other hand, no previous book of Eliot's,
with, perhaps, the exception of Adam Bede, over contained
so fine a plot, so admirably worked out. None of the books
we have reviewed contains so many really fine characters, nor
does it betray so subtle an insight into the modes of growth
of a better moral
life within the shrivelling buds and blossoms
of the selfish life which has been put off and condemned.
In Vani~l Vehonda, for the first time, the poetical side of
George Elid's genius attains adequate expression, through the
medium which is proper to her - that of prose - and in complete
association with the non-poetical element of her nature.
To discover the central motive of Daniel Vehonda,
it should be studied in connection with its immediate prede-
cessor, MiddletYlClhch. On first impressions the contrast is stri-
king.
In Middlemahch the prosaic or realistic element occupies
a much larger place; a great proportion of the novel
does not
contain satire, because satire connotes the idea of exagera-
tion and malicious purpose. The chief figures - Lydgate,
Dorothea - are enveloped by a swarm of subordinate characters,
each admirably real, and to them we are compelled to give away
a share of our interest, a share of our admiration,or detesta-
tion,or s ymp a t hy .
I n V(( Ht et Vl'JLO 11 d Cl. ,
the po e tic a 1 0 rid e ale 1e IIIe nt
decidedly preponderates. We should feel
the needle-pricks of
Mrs Cadwallader's epigrams an irritating impertinence. Our
emotions are strung too tensely to permit us to yield an amused

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268
t 0 1era nce tot he fin e d i s r e r s ion 0 f the i de a i n ~1 r Br 0 0 ke I s
discourse.
In place of a background of ugliness - the Middle-
march streets, the hospital, the billiard-room, the death-
chamber of Old Featherstone, his funeral
procession attended
by Christian carnivora - we have backgrounds of beauty, the
grassy court of the abbey enclosed by a gothic cloister, the
July sunshine, and blown roses; Cardell Chase, the changing
scenery of the forest from roofed grove to open glade; eve-
ning on the Thames at Richmond with the lengthening shadows
and the mellowing light, its darkening masses of tree and
building between the double glow of the sky and the river
the splendour of sunset in a great city, while the lit-up,
expectant face is gazing from Blackfriars Bridge, westward,
where the grey day is dying gloriously; the Mediterranean
its shores "gemlike with purple shadows, a sea where one may
float between blue am blue in a open-eyed dream that the world
has done with sorrow" (1).
These differences in externals correspond with the
essential
inward difference between the two works - the one,
Middlema~~h, is critical, while its successor aims at being
in a certain sense constructive. Middlema~~h closes with
neither heroic joy nor noble tragic pain. The heart-beats
and sob s aft era n una t t a i ne d good ne s s 0 f a Sa i nt The res a, f 0 un d res s
of nothing, "tremble off and are dispersed among hindrances
instead of centering in some long-recogni-zable deed" (2).
The intellectual pa s s i on which might have produced a Soichat
has for net result a heavy insurance, and a treatise upon that

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269
disease which owns a good deal of wealth on its own side.
Heart and brain alike prove failures.
But Middlema~~h is not the final word of our great
imaginative t e a c he r . l~hether consciously so designed or not,
Daniel De~onda comes to us as a counterpnise or a correlative
of the work which immediately preceeds it. There we saw how
two natures framed for largely desinterested services to
humanity can be narrowed - the one into the round of the
duteous sweet observances of domestic life - the other into
the servitude which the world imposes upon those who ilccept
its base terms and degrading compensations. Here we are shown
how two natures can be ennobled and enlarged, the one rescued
through the anguish of man has power to bestow upon the soul
of man, from self-centered insolence of youth, the crude
egoism of a spoilt child; the other, a nature of finer mould
and temper than that of Lydgate, with none of the spots of
commonness in it which produced a disintegrating effect on
Lydgate's action,but exposed through its very plenteousness
and flexibility of sympathy to peculiar dangers - the danger
of neutrality in the struggle between common things and ele-
vated things which fill
the world, the danger of wandering
energy and wasted ardours ; and from these dangers Deronda
is delivered, he is incorporated into a great ideal
life,
made one with his nation and race, and there is confided to
him the heritage of duty(bound
wi t h love)which wa s his t o r e -
fathers ', and of which it had been sought to deprive him.

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2 7 [J
lA) hen
VI C
S pea k 0 f
IlL{ cl d CC IJI CUl C.has
m0 r ere a 1 i s tic, and
the 1ate r n0 vel a s In 0 rei de a 1, i t i s not me ant t hat t 11 e 0 ne
is true to the facts of life and the other untrue; it is
rather meant that in the one the facts are taken more in the
gross, and in the other there is a passionate selection of
these facts that are representative of the highest (and also
the lowest) things. And it will not be irrelevant to observe
. here that the leading characters in Middlemahc.h and Vaniel
Vehonda
all escape the circle of the author's judgement.
It is claimed for each of them that they aspire to escape
into the great world. Dorothea 1S the partial exception. When
confronted by her uncle, Casanbon, her sister Celia, or Chet-
tham, she is fully controlled, fully understood. But Deronda
is extravagantly moral and spiritual. Dorothea Brooke and
Will
Ladislaw in their scenes together have the same defect.

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271
IV - CONCLUSION -
From the techniques revealed by the study of the
structure in Goerge Eliot's novels, it is difficult to avoid
the conclusion that the unifying principle in George Eliot1s
novels is the principle of analogy. She does not consider the
beginnings and endings of her novels as
important as the
"{nrie r r e l a t i ons ". George Eliot held a clear, personal
vi ew
about what unity in a work of art is
" a n o pe r a :", she wrote
II mu s t
be no mosaic of melodies stuck together with no other
method than is supplied by accidental
contrast
but an
organic whole, which grows up like a palm, its earliest por-
tions containing the germ and prevision of all
the r e s t " (1).
Again, this early notion of unity underwent development, so
that later in her work, it came to mean lithe relationship of
multiplex interdependent
parts to a whole which is itself
in the most varied and therefore fullest relation to other
wh o l e s " (2). At the end of her career, she had pressed her
conception of form so far that the beginnings and endings of
her novels had become a source of frustration.
Throughout her career George Eliot discourages the
reader from giving as much significance to the beginning and
ending as to the intrinsic relations of which these are only
the outer limits. The first words of the first chapter motto
of Da H~L c f V(''1 0 11 clate 11 the re Cl de r t hCl t t he po et can don 0 t hi n9
11 \\'J i t h 0 11 t
the III a k e - bel i eve 0 f
a L, (~ ~.j -j n n i n 9 11.
She ill a k est he p0 i n t
i n ale t t e r t hCl tile ndin 9s are i nC' V -j t cl b 1Y the 1c a s t sat i s f act 0 r y
pCl r t 0 f a tl y \\'1 0 r kin VIhie h the r e i san y III e 11 i t 0 f cl eve lop men t
(3).
11

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272
She speaks in a review of the "a r t i fi c i a l necessities of a de-
nouemc nt " (4). And she maintains that concl usion is
the Itleak
point of most authors, but some of the fault lies in the very
nature of a conclusion, wh i c h is at best a ne qa t l on" (5).
Arthur Donnithorne's last-minute appearance, with Hetty's
release, and the last chapter flood that drowns Maggie Tulliver
are, as it were, the negation of form by outline, these we
feel
are brought about for reasons of necessity.
Indeed, the
conclusions are George Eliot's weak point in her novels; form
for her must end where it does not really end. Every novel
is torn ragged from its real context. The universe is a
"tempting range of r e l e va nc i e s " (6). The Finale of Middie.mc(!1.c.h
i s not a fin ale and beg ins : 11 Eve r y 1 i mi t i s a beg inn i ngas
well a san end i ng 11 ;
and i n her hug e 1a s t n0 vel, Va n.: e.e. V(JA.. 0 n. da ,
she seems to have felt bound to make some apology for the lI a r -
tificial necessities ll her conception of form has imposed on
her. The m0 t tot 0 the fir s t chap t err e f e r s tot hell ma ke - be -
lieve of a beginning", and it concludes, liNo retrospect will
take us to the true beginning
and whether our prologue be
in heaven or earth, it is but a fraction of that all-pressupos-
ing fact with which our story sets out ll (7).
Other story-tellers center our hopes and fears in
the happiness er unhappiness of their chief personages; a
VI e ddin 9 0 r
a fun era 1 b r i n9s t 0 a n end a ton ce 0 ur e m0 t ion a 1
disturbance. George Eliot is profoundly moved by the spectacle
of hum a n joy and hum a n 5 0 r r 0 \\'1, deat h t 0 her i sal VIay s t r a 9i c ,
but the rei 5 5 0 111 C t h i n9 111 0 r e t rag i c t ha n c l~ 5 sat ion 0 f b j' eat h ,

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273
and of the pulse; there is the slow letting go of life and
the ultimate extinction of a soul; to her the marriage joys
are dear, but there is something higher than the highest hap-
piness of lovers. When Tom and Maggie sink in the hurrying
Floss, there is left an aching sense of abrupt incompleteness,
of imperious suspension, of intolerable arrest; and with
this a sense of the utter helplessness of our extremest lon-
gings. This is cruel to our tender desire for joy. But in
each tale of George Eliot's telling, if the question arises
of the ruin or restoration of moral character, every other
interest becomes subordinate to this.

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\\\\
k
Notes on Structure and Form'MiddJemarch
I. George R.
Greeger , ~eorge El~ot
P. Coutury J. Critical
Essays'. George Eliot's Conceptiol) g "Form" by Darrel Mansell,
jr, London,
Prentice -
Hall Inc.,
1970, P.
66
2. George R.
Grceger, Ope
cit.
66
3. J. W. Gross, cd. George Eliot's Life as related on her datters
and journals.
(London 1885)
11, 10
4. Middlemarch ch.
IS P.
171
5. Gordon Haight 6d. The George Eliot Jetters,
(New Haben
Yale
University Press,
1954-55)
Ill, A.
Notes on Structure and Form
Daniel Deronda
- _ - - : . . . -
I - Daniel Deronda ch 54 P.
733
2. Middlemarch Prelude P.
26
Notes on The Conclusion to Form and Structure
I - Thomas Pinney,
ed, .~~s..:?.9ys~_: Gcorge El iot.
(London
Rout-
ledge L.
Kegan Paul 1963)
102
2. Pinney, Ope cit,
P.
433
3. Gordon Haight Ope cit. Letters VI P.P.
241-242
4. Arts and Belles Lettres
' Westminster Review' (1856)
LXV P.
639

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\\
f
5. Letters,
11, P.
324
6. Middlernarch ch IS P.
170
7. Daniel Deronda ch I P.
35

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274
C H APT E R
11
===~~==~======~=~=
DESCRIPTIVE AND Nl\\RRATIVE METHODS
===~========~=========~~~========
I - FIRST PHASE -
t~r Steiner It/rites of "the total
lack of technique
on George Eliot's part ... by interfering constantly in the
narration)George Eliot attempts to persuade us of what wuld
be artistically evident ... At other times George Eliot adds
to her omniscience deliberate comments and summaries of events ll
(1).
Then he adds that omniscience is an author's most lazy
approach and that personal
interference in the action must
be compared to what occurs in a Chinese theatre where the
manager comes on during the plays to change props. But we do
not know which period or specific novel Mr Steiner referred
to.
If he meant George Eliot's technique in general, then his
assertion is likely to raise violent controversy. But if he
alluded to the first period, and more precisely, to Adam Bede,
then he is liable to enjoy the acquiescence of the majority.
t/l r St e i ne r I sas s e r t ion
i s t rue to Ada YJI 13 (L dei nde e d .
The ways in which George Eliot goes about defining the symbo-
1i ere "I a t ion s hip s 0 f L0 Cl III S h ire and Ston y s h ire are 0 c cas ion all y
c 1UIII Sy. Li ke III any a not he I' Vie t 0 I' i a ns , [1 i 0 t doe s not he sit ate
to step in and speak directly to the point, telling us dis-
cur s i vel v , a 1III 0 std i dCl C tic all y, vJ hat L0 it 111 5 hire and Ston y s hire

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275
represent. Only now and then does she trust the really very
powerful imagery associated with the two worlds to carry
a 10 net hew e i 9ht 0 f de fin i t ion. Ho}' e f re que nt 1y, she c0 mpro -
mises by creating a dramatic situation in which conversations
of characters about Loamshire and Stonyshire have a defining
function, while she herself keeps discreetly in the back-
ground.
For example, much of Dinah Morris's function in the
first part of the book is best understood in terms of a
surrogate definer. Herself a representative of the Stonyshire
world, she nevertheless has family attachments to Loamshire,
where her aunt and uncle manage a prosperous farm. Her position
is ambiguous: because of her kinship to the Paysers she com-
mands a certain respect; at the same time, the community is
essentially distrutful of her, both as an outsider and as
a Methodist. Thus, when Dinah goes to the village green in Hays-
lope to preach, every lIgeneration ... from old "Fe y t he r La f t " ....,
down tot he bab i e s ,11 (2) i s ne a rat ha nd, but "a 11 too k car e
not to join the Methodists on the Green, and identify themselves
in that way with the expectant audienc~, for there was not one
of them that would not have disclaimed the imputation of having
come out to hear the "preacher-woman";they had only come out to
see" wha t war a - qo i n ' on, t i ke " (3).
Most of the failures in Adam Bede derive from an ins-
tability in George Eliot's attitude towards her characters. The
stylistic symptoms of this instability are easy to detect:

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276
- the first and rarest, is a certain stridency in George Eliot's
address to the reader, marked by aggressive questions and
emphatic assertions. A good example of this is to be found
in chapter 29 ; it concerns Arthur's evasive rationalizations
about Hetty :
"Are you inclined to ask whether this can be the same Arthur
who, two months ago, had that freshness of feeling, that
delicate honour which shrinks from wounding even a senti-
ment, a n.d does not contemplate any more positive offence
as possible for it ? - who thought that his own self-respect
was a higher tribunal than any external opinion? The same,
I assure you, only under different conditions" (4).
Chapter 17 provides another example. George Eliot
begins the chapter with a remarkable bl~ightness that betrays
her nervousness and uncertainty; she assumes a reaction from
the reader about the Reverend Irwine which is supposed to follow
"This Rector of Broxton is little better than a pagan !"
I hear one of my readers excl aim'! (5).
The infuriating th~ng about this, of course, is that she hears
nothing of the sort; the reader is repelled by having his
reactions determined for him; he feels himself, and not the
character, to be a puppet manipulated by the author.
- The second SYIll[JtOITl 'is a certain archness or wh i msi c a l i t y ;
in t hi s example, from the end of c ha pt e r 3, it e me r qe s mainly
as a mock-modesty and an over-heavy ~ r ony :

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277
Still - If I have not always been found in a direct ratio
with a sensibility to the three concords, and it is possi-
ble - thank Heaven ! - to have very erroneous theories
and very sublime feelings (6).
- Finally, there is a rhetor-ical floridity which betrays George
Eliot1s uneasiness at being required to d2al with passionate
feeling
this, for instance, from chapter 12, describing
Hetty and Arthur :
Love is such a simple thing when we have only one-and-twenty
summers and a sweet girl of seventeen trembles under our
glance, as if she were a bud first opening her heart with
wondering rapture to the morning. Such young unfurrowed
souls roll to meat each other like two velvet peaches that
touch softly and are at rest; they mingle as easily as
two brooklets that ask for nothing but to entwine themselves
and ripple with ever - interlacing curves in the leafiest
hiding-places (7).
But Adam Bede does not exhibit only failures of
George Eliot1s intrusive technique. There are gems like
to-
wards the end of ch. 26, Adam walks home,
tormented by doubts
about Hetty ; he finally consoles himself and the author writes
And so Adam went to bed comforted, having woven for
him s elf ani n9e n-j 0 uS we b 0 f pro ba b i 1 i tie s - the sur est
screen a wise man can place between himself and the truth
. (8 Y.

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278
This comment is potently and succesfully placed;
it arises naturally from the i mme d i a t e l y preceding description
and analysis of Adam's turmoil. Through the image of the web,
it relates to one of the main strands of imagery and one of
the main themes of the novel, and it makes, quietly and unem-
phatically, its own ironical point.
Adam Bede exhibits in the purest form those kinds
of successes and failures most important in George Eliot's
handling of the omniscient technique. Thereafter, as the tech-
nical
assurance increases, her failures become fewer and less
obvious.
There is for example, no equivalent to Hetty Sorrel
in The Mitt on the Fto~~. The treatment of Hetty Sorrel betrays
the stage of the relatively inexperienced and imperfect novelist
whose problem was how to express in the rich fulness of her art
an impoverished reality without either appearing paradoxical
or allowing her art to suffer an impoverishment corresponding
to reality.
She begins in chapters 9 and 15, with a full
ana-
lysis of Hetty - which arouses objections - Later in the story
Hetty is fully and dramatically presented. But even here, in
the jour~ey to and from Windsor, she is presented through
action; only once, in the prison scene, ~oes she achieve any-
thing like adequate articulation of her experience, and this,
contrasting so sharply wi t h her previous moral" inexpressiveness,

---

21Q
strikes us more forcibly than it should, since it throws too
clear a light on Dinah's exhortation. This realization of Hetty
comes late in the book.
But with Maggie Tulliver, George Eliot has learnt
the lesson and the position is reversed; the first extended
analysis of Maggie occurs only after her chilhood is firmly
established. With Hetty, analysis precedes the dramatic pre-
sentation, with r1aggie, it accompanies and follows it.
The dominant convention of narration in Adam Bede
as a whole is that of
omniscience,
and if there are some
gems, blemishes abound.
But there is a successful use of the convention which
is unique to The Mill on the Flo~~. The extended intrusion of
the author in the opening chapters, the contemplation of her
past and present selves create here an intimate and personal
tone. The Mill on the Flo~~ has remarkable dramatic continuity,
in distinction from that descriptive, discursive method of nar-
ration exhibited in Adam Bede. The style in
The Mill on the
Flo~~ is singularly apt and rich, and felicitous.
Onward it
flows and bears us along with an irresistible force, and before
we can get tired of the sometimes prosy interlocutors of the
drama, the author steps in and rouses our attention with a
wise remark or a pleasant reflection that"shows the extensive-
ness of her reading, the ~cuteness of her observation, the ma-
turity of her thougllt and the maturing of
her technique.

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200
This aspect is extensively treated in the part relating to
the structure of the M,{ff OH :the Ffo-O/L
In that study, we saw
how the author's comments and analyses were unobtrusively
brought in.
Like in Adam Bede, she here seems better at making
her characters speak than speaking herself.
Indeed, as if her
descriptions were not vivid enough, she prefers to make her
characters speak for themselves, and the dialogue is sustained
with marvellous ability. But here the slightest shades of
difference between the characters are rendered with great
subtelty. This is remarkab~ displayed in the representation
of the odious Dodson family in which the family likeness is
strictly preserved, while the individual traits are not lost.
11 - SECOND PHASE -
In Middlema~eh, George Eliot achieves the steadiness
and clarity of ironic contemplation which belongs to full matu-
rity. The steady, clear ironical gaze derives from the stabi-
lity of the author - novel
relationship, and it results in
local touches that the early George Eliot would have found
unthinkable: we cannot imagine the author of Adam Bfdr com-
menting on her description of an auction sale that
"This was not one of the sales indicating the de pr-e s s i on
of trade; on the contrary, it was due to Mr Larcher's
great success in the carrying business, which warranted

---

2 B1
his pur c has e 0 f Cl mCl ns 'j 0 n ne Cl r Ri ve Y' s ton a 1 rea dy fur n ish e d
in high style by an illustrious Spa physician - fur~ished
indeed with such large framefu1s of expensive flesh-pain-
ting in the dining-room, that Mrs Larcher was nervous
until
reassured by finding the subjects to be Scriptural"
( 9 ) .
Such a detachment and ease is a surprise but at the same time
most a welcome one.
In several cases George Eliot opens a chapter with
a paragraph or two of omniscient comment~ all of which show
a confidence and
poise
quite new to her art.
Her
comments
and analyses, instead of being a bulk, here invest a definite
function which shows a great technical advance.
The narrator1s comments and analyses provide a sup-
porting, illuminating context for scenes, reducing their respon-
sabi1ity for conveying meaning directly. Here, with little
interruption by the narrator, we see dramatized various ele-
ments in the character of Dorothea and Ce1ia 's, with emphasis
on certain of Dorothea's qualities especially her sensuous
nature, of which she herself is not, or is imperfect1y"aware.
But we are not wholly dependent on the dialogue and description
to perceive these elements. The scene occupies only the second
half of the chapter; the first has been devoted to an autho-
rial exposition of the s i t ua ti o n 11l1d characters of the tV/O
sisters. Wc are given, in the form of abstract ~na1ysis, infor-
ma t ion whie h vi ill
ass i s t 0 u r U ndc r s t il ndin 9 0 f 1ate r de vel 0 pm e nt s .

---

282
Thus, we are told that "Do r ot he a , with all
her eagerness to
know the truths of life, retained very childlike ideas about
rn a r r i age 11 (1 0 ), pr e par i ng us for her res po nset 0 Cas a nb0 n .
The author's voice does not however remain outside, the scene.
The relation of Dorothea sensuous and religious feelings is
also suggested by the narrator's brief analytic commentary:
"They are lovely", said Dorothea, slipping the ring and
bracelet on her finely-turned finger and wrist, and hol-
ding them towards the window on a level with her eyes. Ail
the while her thought was trying to justify her delight
in the colours by merging them in her mystic religious
joy. (11).
The last sentence may be seen as a brief, unObtrusive
appearance (or intrusion) of the contextual material
in the
scene. Only in retrospect do we recognize that the narrative
has moved a degree toward omniscience, presenting Dorothea
from the vantage point of a greater awareness of her motives
than she herself enjoys.
For the reader prepared by the c0ntextual examples
of Dorothea's attitude towards riding, the comment comes as
are i nfor c erne nt 0 f his i I~ 0 n i c vie w 0 f her tal k 0 f "s Pi r i tu a 1
emblems" - referring to her beautiful gems.
So, con.me nt s are not ends in t hens e l ves. Nor a r e
the yob j e c t s for 0 U r con t c III p1J t -j 0 11. T0 bC's uc ce s s f u1, t hP Y
re Cl uire c 1a I~ i t Y and s i ill P1 -j c i t s , sot h(J t \\'1 e can pas sea s i 1Y a 11 d

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283
quickly over them, to reach the understanding of the main
point which should be our primary preoccupation. But if we
stop to question or even discuss the rights and wrongs of
a particular comment, we shall find that it has turned into
a dead-end, facing us with a sudden blank, or worse, leading
us into a path diverging us from the line of the novel
into
the area of intellectual discourse unconnected with the
body of particular life on the novel. We come back to Adam
Bede to find an example of this kind of failure, at the end
of chapter 5, in Eliot's defence of Irwine, the Rector of
Hayslope.
I quote this example here in order to make more obvious
the maturity of Eliot's technique, by juxtaposing its use in
the two phases of her work.
At first sight thus, chapter 5 seems to be a simple
case of special pleading and on those grounds alone,
is irri-
tating, For so far in the novel, Irwine's character has aroused
controversy neither among other characters, nor obviously in the
reader. But Eliot, with her might and main, exhaustively in-
dulges in his defence. But there is more to it tha~ that,
the interesting point is that the passage involves opinions
and attitudes common in the novel and which we do not find
offensive elsewhere. Eliot here is making a special plea for
one of her characters and uses it
only for sake of scoring
a debating point. At first, she uses the familiar generalizing
technique to set Irwine firmly as a repre~entative figure of
his likes. But then she concludes

---

Such men, happily, have lived in times when great abuses
flourished, and have sometimes even been the living repre-
sentatives of the abuses. That is a thought which might
comfort us a little under the opposite fact - that it
is better sometimes not to follow great reformers of abuses
beyond the threshold of their homes. But whatever you may
think of Mr Irwine now, if you had met him that June after-
noon riding on his grey cob, with his dogs running beside
him - portby, upright, manly, with ~ good-natured smile
on his finely turned lips as he talked to his dashing young
companion on the bay mare, you must have felt that etc ...
etc ...
(12).
But nowhere in the novel are we concerned with great
reformers of abuses, Eliot's advice is gratuitous and at the
same time, we have been led away from Irwine towards a point
which we cannot really relate to the novel. This is a pure
and infortunate example of digression. To cone back to the
point she digressed from, she abruptly jerks Irwine back to
us through a device which merely emphasizes the wrong turning
she had taken.
To this we oppose the scene in MJ.ddte,n1ahc.h,of Lyd-
gate's engagement. The crucial movement from flirtation to love
is presented in analysis as Lydgate, picking up Rosamond's
chain - work,
sees that she is weeping
Remember that the ~mbitious man who was looking at those
For get .. 111 e - not sun de r the VI ate r was ve r y \\v a rill - he a r t e d and
rash. He die! not know wh e r c the c ha i n went; an idea had

---

205
thrilled through the recesses within him which had a
miraculous effect in raising the power of passionate love
lying buried there in no sealed sepulchre, but under the
lightest, easily pierced mould (13).
Here, George Eliot refers the reader to the established
context of analysis for full
understanding of Lydgate's beha-
viour. The function of tone in his comment is complex
at
the same time that it urges sympathetic understanding of Lyd-
gate1s motivation, it prevents identification with him by
associating the reader wit~?narrator's superior point of view.
The allusion which the imagery makes to the Resurrection is not
a local irrelevance, it makes an implicit contrast between
Lydgate and Casanbon, whose capacity for love is burried in a
II s e a l e d
sepulchre ll and who is repeatedly associated with images
of deathly enclosure. This is an example of the good way in
which the comment refers us to the narrative context.
I n t1 i dd1e ma I' c h , we may 1 0 cat e a na 1y s is, and 0 the I'
functions of the author's commenting voice, on a scale of in-
creasing abstraction.
At the most concrete level are dialogue and external
description, from which we move to an internal view of the
characters.There is no necessary reason why this last should
be any more abstract thart~l~xternal, bu t wi th George Eliot it
usually tends that way.
Her usual stylistic device for presen-
ting her character's mind is free, indirect discourse, which,
because it consists of the narrator "indirectly voicing the

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286
character1s thoughts, blends easily into analysis, where
we clearly occupy a level of awareness above that of the
c ha r act er. Fro m a na 1y s i S \\'1 e In ay rn 0 vet 0 fur the r 1eve 1s 0 f
generalization to comments which do not only apply to the
particular scene before us.
This movement of increasing generalization may be
observed within a single paragraph in chapter 7 of Middlema~ch.
The scene begins with an external view of a brief
interchange
between the newly engaged Casanbon and Dorothea, who, eager
for the enlightenment she expects from his wisdom, asks
whether, "to be more useful", she s houl d n I t learn some Latin
and Greek so as to be able to read to him "as r-1ilton 1s daugh-
ters did to their father".
Ca s au bon f-inally grants that" it
might be a great advantage if (she) were able to copy the
Greek character, and to that end it were well to begin with
a little reading" (14). The narrator then moves to an internal
view of Dorothea, presenting her mental
response and the state
of mind which lies behind it
Dorothea seized this as a precious permission. She would
not have asked Mr Casaubon at once to teach her the lan-
guages, dreading of all things to be tiresome instead
of he 1pf u1 ; but i t \\'1 a s not e nt ire 1you t 0 f de v0 t ion t 0
her future husband that she wi s hc d to know Latin and Greek.
Those provinces of masculine knowledge seemed to her a
standing ground from which all
truth could be seen
more
t r u 1y. As i t VI as, she con s tan t 1.Y d0 ubt e d her 0 VI n con c 1us ion s ,

---

2Bl
because she felt her own ignorance: how could she be
confident that one-roomed cottages were not for the
glory of God, when men who know the classics appeared
to conciliate indifference to the cottages with zeal for
the glory? Perhaps even Hebrew might be necessary - at
least the alphabet and a few roots - in order to arrive
at the core of things, and judge soundly on the social
duties of the Christian. And she had not reached that point
of renunciation at which she would have been satisfied
with having a wise husband; she wished, poor child, to
be wise herself. Miss Brooke was certainly very naive
with all
her alleged cleverness. Celia, whose mind had
never been thought too powerful, saw the emptiness of
other people's pretensions much more readily. To have in
general but little feeling, seems to be the only security
against feeling too much on any particular occasion (15).
From description of response the narrator moves to
a brief analytical noting of motivation ("it was not entirely
out of devotion to her future husband" ... land then into a
progressively i nt e r i o r i ze d rendering of her attitude. From
noting how things "seemed to her" we move to their unmediated
semblance in the concluding sentences of free indirect discour-
se where the irony is all
implicit in the naivete of her atti-
tudes ("Perhaps even He br e w might be necessary").
From this point wh e r e the internal view of this par-
ticular llIentJl state hac; been fully established, the passage

---

288
continues in a series of ascending generalizations. First in
analytical summary of Dorothea's attitude, the narrator1s
own voice clearly reappears as the tone adds pity to the
irony: "And she had not reached that point of renunciation
at which she would have been satisfied with having a wise
husband: she wished poor child, to be wise herself". The nar-
rator then begins to withdraw from the character, designating
her more formally, and making a generalization in a comment
which is now abstracted from the particular circumstances:
" ~~ i s s Br 0 0 ke was c e r t a i n1y ve r y na i"ve Iv i t h all her c 1eve r ne s s 11 •
We have been brought to an explicit statement of the obvious
conclusion. But this judgement is not sufficiently balanced
for George Eliot, it must be placed in perspective by further
generalization~a perspective which is reached in a summary
review of the contrast between the two sisters: "Celia, whose
mind had never been thought too powerful, saw the emptiness
of other people's pretensions much more readily'. The irony
here suggests that Celia's greater safety depends on insulation
in her narrow range of abstraction above the particular indi-
viduals who have been considered, applying the conclusions to
the general human state:
"To have in general but little fee-
ling, seems to be the only security against feeling too much
on any particular occasion".
We have moved a great distance
from the particular situation of a few lives.
It is important
to note how this level of abstraction is reached through a
process of rendering, analysis, and progressive generalization,
moving outward from the scene to its conceptual context.

---

289
It is equally important, at this level, to note how
the use of analysis differentiates George Eliot's scenes from
those closer to the drama, depending more on dialogue and
description of behaviour, and which her early novels are
rich in and make a success of,
But from that point of
view, Daniel De~onda is George Eliot's most successful
novel.
\\
Nowhere is Eliot's genius more a ppa re nt than
in the sensitive
precision of her hold on dialogue:
a hold which, with the
variety of living tension she can create with it, is illus-
trated in the scene between Gwendolen and her mother, that fol-
lows on the arrival
of Grandcourt's self-committing note (ch.
26), and in the decisive tete-a-tete with Grandcourt (ch. 27).
It is essenti~lly in her speech that Gwendolen is made a
concrete presence - Gwendolen, whose "ideal
it was to be daring
in speech and reckless in braving danger, both moral and phy-
sic al", 0 f who m 'j t ish a r d t 0 say \\'1 het her she ism 0 rea pt 1y
described as tending to act herself or her ideal of herself
11 who se
1 i vel y ve nt ures 0 men e s s 0 f tal k has the e f f e c t 0 f wit 11
("it was never her aspiration to express herself virtuously
so much as cleverly - a point to be remembered in extenuation
of her w0 r ds , whi ch\\'I ere usua 11y w0 r set ha n she was 11 ) •
It is in the scene between Gwendolen and Grandcourt
that George Eliot's mastery of dialogue is most strikingly
exhibited. We have it in ch. 11, on their being introduced
toe a c hot he r.
rt i s she \\'/ n i nth ere nde ri ng 0 f d r aIII a tic ten s ion
i n ch. 13, \\'1 her o G\\'/ end 0 1e n t a ke s e vas i ve act ion i nth e f ace 0 f
Grandcourt's clear intent to propose.
1 will save quotation

---

290
for the marvellously economicQ1
passage(which is to be found
in the part destined to Crisis and Decision in this study).
AU,ddlemc{fl.c.h and Dan~(',t Dc.,'Londa exhibit the same ma-
turity in Eliot's narrative technique, so we will not linger
on Daniel De~onda which presents the same uses of the technique.
Both novels belong to Eliot's career at its maturest. But still,
1 would like to draw attention on Eliot's growing irony and
humour in her narrative style. She is almost whimsic1e and
seems to play with her narrative. There are two whole pages
in which the talk is thus punctuated: Grandcourt says to
Gwendo1en Harleth
"l
used to think archery was a great bore", Grandcourt began.
He spoke with a fine accent ...
"Are you converted to-day ?" said Gwendolen.
(Pause, during which she imagined various degrees and modes
of opinion about herself that might be entertained by
Grandcourt)
"Yes, since 1 saw you shooting
11
"l
suppose you are a first-rate shot with a rif1e".
(Pause, during which Gwendolen, having taken a rapid
observation of Grandcourt, made a brief graphic description
of him to an indefinite hearer).
"l have 'left off shooting"
11 0 h ,
the n , you are a for mid ab 1e pe r son : Pe 0 p1e who ha ve
done things once and left them off make one feel
very
contemptible, as if one wc r e using cast-off fashious.
1 hope you have not left off a l l follies, because 1 practise
a gre Cl t 111 any 11 •

---

291
il(Pause, during which Gwendolen made several
interpretations
of her own speech)
"What do you call f o ll i e s ? "
"~'Jell, in general, I th-ink whatever is agreeable is called
a folly.
But you have not left off hunting,
I he a r ",
(Pause, wherein Gwendolen recalled what she had heard
about Grandcourt's position, and decided that he was the
most aristocratic-looking man she had ever seen).
"One must do something"
"And do you care about the turf? - or is that among the
things you have left off? "
(Pause, during which Gwendolen thought that a man of extre-
mely calm, cold manner-s
might be less disagreeable as a hus-
band that other men, and not likely to interfere with his
wife's preferences).
"1
run a horse now and then; but I don't go in for the
thing as some men do. Are you fond of horses ?"
"Yes, indeed:
I never like my life so well as when 1 am
on horseback, having a great gallop.
1 think of nothing
1 only feel
myself strong and happy".
(Pause, wherein Gwendolen wondered whether Grandcourt would
like what she said, but assured herself that she was not
going to disguise her tastes)
"Do you like danger ?"
/.
'" I don I t k now. \\~ hen I a 111 0 n h0 r se b a c kIn eve t' t h ink 0 f
danger.
It seems to me t ha t if I h r o ke my bones I should
r
not f e e l it.
I should go o t a ny t hi nq that came my way".
( r a use, dUI' i n 9 \\' h i ch G1'1 en (10 1c n h Cl d r l; nth r 0 u9 haw h0 1e hun-
t. -j n9 sea son wit h t 110 c h0 S l: n 111111 t e r s t. cri de at will) .

---

292
IIYou would perhaps like tiger - hunting or pig-sticking.
I saw some of that for a season or two in the East.
Everythi ng here is poor s t uf f after t ha t ".
11 You.
are fond of danger, then ?II
(Pause, wherein Gwendolen spectaculated on the probability
that the men of coldest manners were the most adventurous,
and felt the strength of her own insight, supposing the
question had to be decided).
1I0 ne must have something or other.
But one gets used to it ll
III begin to think I am very fortunate,
because everything
is new to me : it is only that 1 can't get enough of it.
I am not used to anything except being dull, which I should
like to leave off as you have left off shooting ll •
(Pause, d~ring which it occured to Gwendolen that a man
of cold and distinguished manners might possibly be a
dull companion; but on the other hand she thought that
most persons were dull, that she had not observed husbands
to be companions - and that after all she was not going
to accept Grandcourt) etc ... etc
(16).
The author is deliberately coming out constantly
to present the character1s mind. She is almost playful. The
weight of the irony cannot be denied; but the playfulness of
the form of this strange dialogue is not in keeping with the.
nature of the matter.
Indeed George Eliot is using this method
for serious, pathetic, even dreadful matter. But she uses it
with signal
power.

---

293
II I - CONCLUSION -
To bring a conclusion to the evolution of George
Eliot's narrative and descriptive method~ we will simply
recall the two main aspects which exhibit obvious changes
1°) Her mode of characterization passes from dramatic self-re-
velation to realization of character through comment and
analysis.
2°) Analysis and commentary~ clumsy and often obtrusive in
the early novels~ becomes economically integrated into Eliot's
technique up to the point to make the success of the narrative
method of late Eliot.
Yet~ though the method on her laternovels is artis-
tically mature~ and satisfactory we do not enjoy the later
novel
as much as we do the early ones with all their defects.
For
if Eliot's early handling of analysis and comment is sometimes
clumsy~ she happily does not often recur to that mode of narra-
tion ~ whence the vividness~ lightness~ fresness and spontaneity
of style wh i c h the reader favours. ~Jhile in the l ater wo r k ,
despite their economical use~ analysis and comment engender
heaviness of style through their frequence and the laborious-
ness of the language in which they are realised.

---

1. W.J.
Harvey :!'he Art g George Eliot 'The Omniscient anthor
Convention'
London: Chatto and Windus Ltd 1961, P.
65
2. AB ch 2 P.
29
3.
Ibid,
ch 2 P. 30
4.
Ibid, ch 29 P.
301
5.
Ibid,
ch 17 P. 174
6.
Ibid, ch 3 P.
48
7.
Ibid,
ch 12 P. 134
8.
Ibid, ch 26 P. 278
9. ~iddlemarch, ch 60 P.
648
la Ibid, ch I P. 32
11 Ibid, ch I P. 36
12 Adam Bede ch 5 P • 77
...
13. Middl~!Tlarch ch 31 P.
335
14 Ibid, ch 7 P. 88
15
Ibid,
ch 7 P. 88
16 Daniel Deronda ch 11 PP. 146)47-48

---

2 9 ,~
CONCLUSIONS
======::::==:..:=
I - ELIOT AND THE VICTORIAN READERS -
Before I conclude on this work as a whole, I would
like to quote some Victorians criticisms on Eliot's novels.
I selected those touching the aspects which interest us in
this study.
On Adam Be.de.
liThe Athenaeum" 26 February 1859
"Adam Bede is a novel of the highest class.
Full of quiet
power, without exageration and without any strain after
effect, it produces a deep impression on the reader, which
remains long after the book is closed.
It is as though he
had made acquaintance with real
human beings. (1)
Gera1dine Jewsbury
On The. M--<..t.t 011 ith C'- U OH
"The Spectator", 7 apri1
1860
The novelty and interest lie in the fact that in very few
works of fiction has the interior of the mind been so kepn1y
analysed
There are parts of the story where the style
gives a kind of consciousness of reality, as if you heard the
\\'1 0 r d s
s p0 ken by Cl v0 ice s hCl ken \\'1 i t h the e m0 t ion S s 0 vI ell

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295
described; there are passages of dialogue where the love bet-
ween men and women is expressed more naturally and powerfully,
we think, than in any novel we ever read ... The beauty of
(the) under-current of symbolism is that it is unexpressed
Inferior to Adam Bede in the varied interest of three or four
good characters, it is superior as a work of art; with a
higher aim and that aim more artistically worked out (2).
"The At t a s ? ,
14 April
1860
... The notion of predestined calamity, though never brought
prominently forward, is vaguely hinted at from the commence-
ment and never ,lost sight of throughout the narrative. A
unity and completeness of effect is thus attained, as rare
as it is excellent (3).
On Middie.mcULc.h
liThe Spectator ll , 1 June 1872
We all gr uIII b1eat "I~ i dd1e marc h 11; ':/ e all say t hat the act ion
is slow, that there is too much parade of scientific and
especially physiological
knowledge in it, that there are
turns of phrase which arc even pedantic, and that occasional-
ly the bitterness of the commentary on life is almost cynical
...
It is not in any degree true that
the incidents are spe-
c i all y III e 1a nc h0 1y. 0 nth e c 0 Tl t r a r y. The s tor y i s not a tal 1
of a gloomy de s c r i pt t o n , and there are characters 'in it which

---

29G
the reader enjoys as he enjoys a gleam of warm sunshine on
a dull October days, - especially that of Caleb Garth, the
happy, eager, unworldly land-surveyor. Then again there are
pictures showing a humour so large and delicate that that
laughter which really brightens the spirits breaks out even
if we are alone, - ... Mr Brooke, and Mrs Cadwallader are
enough to cheer the reader of any story, however intellectual
... Still, in spite of these snatches of warm sunshine, and
of the frequent springs of delightful
humour, - at the end
of almost every part and every chapter, if not nearly every
page, there comes an involuntary sigh ... Perhaps,
however,
the deepest symptom of melancholy in this book is the disposi-
~ion so marked in it to draw the most reflective and most
spiritual characters as the least happy (4).
liThe Ti me s ? , 7 March 1873
... No one can close Middlema4eh without feeling that he has
read a great book. He is impressed, and, perhaps, depressed,
by its cruel likeness to life; for George Eliot does not
bring in the golden age even at the end of the fourth volume,
and nothing happens merely in order that the curtain may fall
pleasantly (5).
Frederick Napier Broome.

---

297
On Daniel D~honrla
"The Spectator", 29 j ul y 1876
There can be no doubt that in some, perhaps in manY,.respects,
Daniel Dehonda is a much less powerful book than Middlemahch,
but in one respect certainly it is more so. To our minds, the
deficiency in power is chiefly to be seen in the incidental
remarks, the observations on life and character ... But ...
whatever may be the faults of this last work of George Eliot1s,
we do not think that any of her books, not even "Adam Bede",
has been so powerfully constructed in point of plot (6).
R.H.
Hutton
"The Acad e my", 9 se pt e mber 1876
Independently of its interest as a mere story and as a vehicle
for reflections, Daniel Dehonda is eminently interesting, be-
cause it presents in a fresh and brilliant light the merits
as well as the faults of its writer - merits and faults which
are here sharply accentuated ... On the one hand, Vie are
prepared to find, and we do find, an extraordinarily sustained
and competent grasp of certain phases in the character; a capacity
of rendering minute effects of light and shade, attitudes,
transient moods of mind, complex feelings and the like, which
is simply unparalleled in any other prose writer; an aptitude
for minting sharply ethical maxims; and a wonderful
sympathy

---

290
with humanity, so far, at least, as
it is congenial to the
writer. On the wrong side of the account must be placed a
tendency of talk about personages instead of allowing them
to develop themselves, a somewhat lavish profusion of senten-
tious utterance, a preference for technical
terms in lieu of
the common dialect which is the fitter language of the nove-
lis t
(7).
George Saintsbury.

---

299
11 -
GENERI\\L -
There is no danger of a r o us i nq any controversy by
saying that the works of the first period of George Eliot1s
career~ Adam Bede and The Mill on the Flo~6~ have the unmis-
takable mark of genins.
It is impossible to estimate the merit
of the Paysers the Dodsons and the rest with all
their sur-
roundings and dependencies, For they are so real, so alive,
that we irresistibly give them the total control of our laugh-
ter and sympathy, as we move among them. Over that world too~
broods a certain romance~ the only romance that George Eliot
allowed herself: the romance of the past. These books are
admirably readable and have no trace of pomposity or pretence.
Yet the loss of simplicity~ the absence of charm,
spontaneity and fresheness are not a sufficient reason for
asserting that the works of the later period of George Eliot1s
career show defect of general
power. We must all a dm i t ,
for example~ that there are not many passages in modern fiction
so vigorous as the description of poor Lydgate~ whose higher
aspirations are dashed with a comparatively vulgar desire
for wordly success~ gradually engulfed by the selfish per-
sistence of his wife. On the contrary, the picture is so firm
and so lifelike t ha t one reads it with a sense of actual bit-
t ern e ss.
I n D{( 11.( C C. DC'. .'t 0 11 d a, \\'Je ha ve i nth est 0 r y 0 f Gran dc0 ur t
and Gwendolen a singularly powerful study of domestic dangers.
If there is some questioning of the limits of George Eliot1s
powers, or some misconception of true artistic conditions,

---

nobody can read these without the sense of having been in
contact with a comprehensive and vigourous intellect, with
high feeling and keen powers of observation.
Indeed, we cannot
help regretting the loss of the early charm and fresness.
As we read Adam Be-de, or The. MiLt on the, F!o/.).o, we are impre-
gnated with and carried away by, the magic.
It is only after
the perusal
that we recognize the power which these works
imply.
In Midd!e-ma~eh and
Vanie.! Ve~onda, we feel the power
straightaway but vainly search for the charm.
Such changes pass
over any great mind which goes through a
genuine process of development.
It is not surprising that
the reflective powers should become more predominant in later
years; that reasoning should to some extent take the place
of intuitive pe~ception ; and that experience of life should
give a sterner and sadder tone to the implied criticism of
human nature. We are prepared to find less spontaneity, less
freshness of interest in the little incidents of life, and
we are not surprised that a mind so reflective and richly
stored should try to get beyond the charmed circle of its
early successes, and to give a picture of wider and less
picturesque aspects of human life. Surely this makes her work
melancholy.
It appears the more so because of her painful,
uneasy turn for analysis; because she hears what she calls
"the roar that lies on the other side of silence"
; that is,
the minute, unspoken play of motive that lies behind an ordi-
nary conversation; and also the sorrows or bewilderments of
simple inarticulate persons, like Hetty Sorrel. For this kind
of analysis she has a genius.

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301
If she is oppressive, it i"s due to the choice
of her f a v0 u r i t e the Ine : the \\'! 0 mani n nee d 0 f a con f e s s 0 r .
Or. a woman with noble aspirations but some how frDstrated. It is in
setting such characters before us that George Eliot has achie-
ved her greatest triumphs, and made some of her most unmistaka-
ble failures.
It is here that we meet the complaint that she
is too analytic; that she takes the point of view of the
confessor rather than that of the artist; and is more anxious
to probe the condition of her heroines'souls, to give us an
accurate diagnosis of their spiritual
complaints, and an ac-
count of their moral evolution, than to show us the character
in action.
But there again, every serious writer must derive
his power from his insight into men and women. A Cervantes
or Shakespeare or Thackeray or Dickens, command our attention
by forcible presentation of certain types of characters; and,
so far, George Eliot does nut differ from her predecessors.
Nor, again, would any truly imaginative writer give us mere
abstract analyses of characters, instead of showing us the
concrete person in action.
If George Eliot has a tendency to
this error, it does not appear in her early period.
So, what is it, in fact, that makes us conscious that
George Eliot has a position apart; that in a field where she
had so many competitors of no mean c3.pacity, she stands out
a s 9.1 per i 0 r t 0 all 0 f the rn ; 0 r t nat, VIhi 1s t \\'!e can e a s i 1y
imagine that many other r c pu t a t i o ns wi l l fade with a change
off ash ion, the rei s s 0 111 c t hi n9 "j n GC' 0 r CJ eEl i 0 t I S \\'! h i c h \\'1 ea}' e
confident will
give delight to all
generations?

---

':<
v 0 ')
,_
To such questions, there is one obv i ous answer at hand. There
are some parts of her writings upon which every competent
reader has
dwelt with delight and satisfaction, and which
seem fresher and more charming whenever he comes back to
the m, for Geo r geE 1 i 0 the r s elf knew i n whie h fie 1dshe Y' my s t e -
rious powers were at play.
In those fields, she could excel,
almost with an insolent facility.
Characterization is one of those fields.
George
Eliot's delineation of character is remarkably firm.
"t~y
artistic bent", she says"is directed not at all
to the pre-
sentation of eminently irreproachable characters, but to the
presentation of mixed human beings in such a way as to call
forth tolerant.judgment,pity, and sympathy".
It is her intellect which is the source of her
success. Her power of drawing conclusions gave her a naturally
sharp eye for symptoms of moral
strength and weakness, taught
her to discern them in all their varying modes of expression.
She could also distinguish between different varieties of the
same characteristic; we saw for instance how Dorothea's sense
of duty differed from Mary Garth1s. She took advantage of her
observation. She traced these expressions of virtue and weak-
ness to their original source in the character, discovered
the spark of nobility, the streak of weakness which were their
origin.
Finally, her disciplined generalizing intelligence
taught her to see the significance of her discoveries.
Having
analysed a charQctcr into its elements, she was able to distin-
guish their
relative force and position. She could deduce

---

303
its central principle so that, however complex and inconsis-
tent it might appear, she saw it as a unity.
It it this grasp
of ps y ch 0 log i c ale s s e nt i a 1s "I h "j c h gO i ve she r c ha r act e r s th e ; r
reality. We understand them. We know just how each will
react
and why. We know exactly what special mixture of common human
ingredients makes each character act differently from the
rest.
Her power to describe mixed characters extends to mixed
states of mind.
Indeed, the field of her most characteristic
triumphs is the moral battle-field. Her magnifying-glass can
detect any sign of struggle, elucidate the position of the
forces concerned, and reveal
the line of their action. We are
shown exactly how the forces of temptation deploy themselves
for the attack; how those of conscience rally to resistance,
the ins and outs of their conflict, how inevitably in the
given circumstances one or the other triumphs.George Eliot
is most remarkable in her picture,of the process of moral
defeat. The gradual steps by which r~r Bulstrode is brought
to further Raffle~s death, Arthur's gradual yielding to his
passion for Hetty. Maggie to hers for Stephen. With an inexo-
rable clearness she reveals how temptation insinuates itself
into the mind. She describes how temptation retreats at the
first suspicious movement of conscience, and' how it comes
back, disguised. With an equal
insight, she can portray the
moral chaos that takes possession of the mind a f t e r the wrong
has been done. 'She exposes all the complex writhings of a
disturbed spirit striving to make itself at ease on the bed
of a disturbed conscience; the desperate reasoning by which

---

304
it attempts to justify itself; its inexhaustible ingenuity
in blinding itself to unpleasant facts;
the baseless hopes
it invokes for its comfort. Eliot can distinguish precisely
how different an act looks before it is committed, shrouded
in the softening darkness of the secret heart; and after,
exposed in all
its naked ugliness to the harsh daylight of
other people's judgment.
Another character that strikes us in this intellectual writer
is an emotional quality. She excels in one specially diffi~ult
and risky kind of writing. She has a singular fondness for
scenes that may be called confessionnal
; where some limited
character, or as she would say II na t ur e " , is spiritualised,
if only for a moment, by a stronger and fuller one. This sub-
ject reccurs again and again.
In the interview in prison
between Dinah Morris ind Hetty, the dialect is evangelical.
It becomes purely human and secular in the appeal made by Doro-
thea to Rosamond.
It is none the less impressive. The dramatic
truth and energy and the mastery of the right words where
a word wrong would be a disaster, are undeniable.
George Cliot is unrivalled in her creation and wor-
king of the complications and consequences inherent in all
relationships.
It is by her clear perception of things, the
precision with which she isolates them, that her scenes are
made real to us. She further enriches her picture by indica-
ting behind these visible features the causes, historic, social,
and physical, from where they originate. She shows us not
only the flower but its root, soil, and the weather which have

---

30~
gi ve nit its pe c ul.a r col 0 uran d s hape. \\~ e see i t not 0 n1y
in the present but in the past; not just in
isolation
but in relation to the world around it.
It is this perspective
that gives outline to George Eliot's picture of the social
structure.
It is not a minute picture. George Eliot does not
distinguish the different social positions of Dorothea Brooke
and Rosamond Vincy with the wealth of illustrative superficial
detail. She reveals them against their historical background.
George Eliotts world is exhibited as an expression of the civi-
lization of England at a particular phase of its development.
We are shown how DOrotheals superior place in the social scale
comes from the fact that she is the daughter of a land-owner
in an agricultural district for cgnturies domina-
ted by landlords
while Rosamond is only the child of a
merchant in one of its ~wns. We are not only shown what we
can see for ourselves, but can also use the authorts
acuteness
and perception; George Eliot shows us what appears to the
man who looks at her scene in the light of a knowledge of
social history.
From such a position in experience, George
Eliot naturally sees society at a deeper level than its poli~
tical, philosophical, religious abstractions indicate, and
she sees her own society in her own choice of word, as
" vi c i 0 us". Her f a v0 ur i tern eta ph0 l~
for so c i et y i sail net wo r k" ,
a "t a ng1e d s ke in", a 't a ng1e d \\IJ e b". This i s jus t , and i t i s
the 9 r 0 und 0 f her fin est a chi eve IIIe nt s . H0 \\IJ eve r, the met a ph0 r ,
while having a positive usefulness in its indication of
complity, has also a negative effect. For it tends to repre-
sent s oc i a l r o l a t i o ns hi ps as pa s s i ve a c t e d upon rather than
j
acting.
"One fears" she remarks, "to pull the wr on q thread,

---

306
in the tangled scheme of things". The caution is reasonable
but the total effect of the image false.
For in fact e~ery
element in the complicated system is active: the relation-
ships are changing, constantly, and any action - even abs-
tention.
A kinded irony is the source of George Eliot's
few successful effects of pathos. There is a great deal of pa-
thos in George Eliot1s novels. Like most Victorian novelists,
she likes to brighten her pages with a glistening sprinkle
of tears. Now and then, with a singular sutlety, George
Eliot touches our hearts. She always does it by the poignancy
with
which she brings out contrast between the ideal splen-
dour of people1s feelings and the commonplace weakness of
their actual
lives and characters.
George Eliot1s intellectual approach is shown clearly
not only in her serious characters but also in "characters
parts". Characters such as Mrs Payser, or Mr Brooke, provide
occasions for wiping our tears away, and restore our smile.
They exist to exhibit George Eliot1s humour rather than her
understanding of numan nature. We enjoy the vivid presentation
of their idiosyncracies of speech and manner. They are unfai-
lingly delightful, to my mind, and are among George Eliot1s
finest creations.
In spite of the variety of her talents and the
width of her scope, her works comport amazing weaknesses.
Indeed, if George Eliot is admirable in careful exposition of

---

307
ch a r act er s , she i sat a 10 s s when de a 1 i ng wit h cat a s t r 0 phe s .
There she suddenly weakens just when we expect her full
powers
to be exerted. This is conspicuous in The Mill on the Flo~~.
It is easy to see why her form does not satisfy us. Life
is chaotic, art is orderly. The novelist's problem is to
evolve an orderly composition which is also a convincing
picture of life. George Eliot sacrifices life to art. Her
plots seem too neat and symmetrical to be true. We do not
feel them to have grown naturally from their situation like
a flower, but to have been put together deliberately and
culatedly like a building. Fors in spite of ber determination
that her story should develop logically, she has not that
highest forma faculty which makes development appear inevitable,
she has to twist facts to make them fit her purpose: the
marriage between Dinah and Adam, which provides the happy
ending for Adam Bede does not strike us as inevitable; indeed,
what we have learnt of Adam's taste in women leads us to think
it highly unplausible. But the moral purpose which directs the story demands
that Adam and Dinah, ,the two virtuous characters in the book, should
be adequately rewarded for their virtue ; .. and marrying them
•
to each other seems the handiest reward in the circumstances.
In ord~r to achieve structural symmetry, George Eliot has
been forced to relase her vigilant grip on truth.
When all
is said and donc
it only remains to deplore
t
the disproportion, in George Eliot's wo r k , between the meagre
effect of the whole and the vigourous character of the diffe-
rent parts. Our great consolation is that
in some aspects of
t
her narrative technique, she remains unsurpassed.

---

Notes on the Conclusion
I. Holmstrom : George Eliot and her Readers: A Selection g;
Contemporary Reviews with a Commentary 1
(Great Britain:
William Clowes
sous Ltd 1966)
2. Hlmstrom, Ope cit,
P.P.
25,26,27
3.
Ibid, P.
30
4 . Ibid, P.P. 78,79,80
5.
Ibid,
P. III
6.
Ibid, P. 134-5
7.
Ibid, P.
138

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300
B 1 BI, 10GII.!'l.PlIY
----_._---------
Qn r!'J}~~J]_~or Y.-cL_1b.~_!1c:lr r _'lj:i~_0_t,~<;: llDiq~l e
._---------_._------- _..
--_._._-.---------_._--------
~._~--
Allot, Miriam, ~ovelists o~_~h~Novel : Characterization.
London:
Routledge and kegan Paul Ltd. 1965.
Booth, Wayne C., Th~Rh~t~ric of Fiction Chicago
Univ. 9
chicago Press,
1961.
rd
Forster, E.M.
Asp~cts of the Novel 3
ed.
(1927)
rpt Great Britain
Pelican Books, Abiuger Edition ,
1976
Josipovici,
Gabr~el. The ~?dern En~lish Novel: The reader,
the
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writer and the work • London : Opeu Book Publishing Ltd,
1976
Raban, Jouathan. ~le Technique of Modern Fiction: Essay in
Pratical Criticism.
London : Edward Arnold Ltd.
1972
Pr imary "J'e x t s
~e her Letters and Journals, (London 1885)
Eliot, George.
The Works 9 George Eliot 24 vols.
Cabinet Edition
F.dinburg and London : William Blackwood The Standard Edition.
Haight, Gordon S. ed.'The George Eliot Letters: 7 vols. New Haben:
yale University Press 1954-55
Pinney, Thomas ed.
Essays 9 gcorge Eliot.
London
Routledge
_..----- -"--'-"--~'----'"-~--
and Kcgan Paul r963

---

309
Creeger,
george R.
G~_Q!,~__ EliQt_~_ Coll~~Lc~_:i.on ~_Criti.s:~aL~ssj:l,Y§
Prentice -
hall Inc. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey 1970
Hardy,
Barbara, ed. M.iddlemarch : Critical Approaches to the
Novel'
London: University of London, The Athlone Press 1967
Haight, Gordon S. ed. P.
Coutury g
George Eliot Criticism. London
Methuen
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1965
Selected Bibl~A£hy
Anster,
Henry, Local Habitations
'Regionalism ou the Early Novels
g George Eliot 'Cambridge Massachussets : Harvard University
Press 1970
Beaty, Jerome. Middlemarch '
from Notebook to Novell
: A
Study
g george Eliot's Creative Method Urbana: The University g Illi-
nois Press 1960
Burton, SH The Criticism 9 Prose London
Longman
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1973
Cecil,
David. ~arly Victorian Novelists, 2 nd ed.
(1934)
London:
Constable CO Ltd 1963
Garret, Peter K.
'Scene and Symbol Fr~~~. Eliot to J. Jo~~.
Yalo University Press, New Habeu and London 1969
Hardy,
I3arbara 'C.!J- tic_~~_}::ss~~'L~__ g_n_g~o~3~~J12t
.
Bro adway ,
House·
Routledge
Kegan Paul Ltd 1970

---

31 U
Hardy,
~arba:r::_~__-<:rJiG~Q..Y§~$.~~~_org_~~l i9_t : 11 A Study in Form.
London
: University of London,
The Athlone Press 19 59
Hardy,
Barbara, Tellers an~_~i~l~~er§ :
'The Narrative Imagina-
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Universty of London,
the athlone Press 1975
Harvey, W. J.
The Art J.G.
Eliot London
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1961
Holloway, Johu The Victorian S~ :
'George Eliot' New York
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(1953)
1965 chap; V P.P.
III
157
Laing,
R.D.
Self and Others.
U.S.A. Pelican Book 1971
Leavis, F.R. The Great Tradition
George Eliot, Henry James
-------~<-----~----"'------
Joseph Courad
New York
New York University Press,
1948
Lerner,
Holmstrom : qeo~~liot and Her Readers: A Selection
g Contemporary Reviews with a COlnrnentary Great Britain : William
Clowes
sous Ltd,
1966
Nisbet, A,
Victorian Fiction: R.
guide to Research'
Massachu-
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1963
Paris,
Bernard J. ~~eriments on Life: George Eliot's Guest
for Values Detroit : Wayne State University Press 1965
Picot, Guillaume, Voltaire
Micromegas Paris
Nouveaux
classiqucs Larousse 1970

---

--
1
-_~
3 1 1
Thale, Jerome The Novels G. qeorge Eliot. U.S.A. Columbia
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(1959)
1967
Speare, Morris Edmund, The Poli t.ical Novel. 'Its development on
England and on America . New York : Hussel and Russel,
1966
'George Eliot and Radicalisme'
chap VIII P.P.
221-236
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~ige to Mathew
Arnold. London : Chatto
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1949
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ry Inc.
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Ltd, Penguin Books,
1975
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george,
paniel DerQnd~, Aylesbury
Hazell Watson and
Viney Ltd Penguin Books
(1876)
1974

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