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Unit 19: The Victorian Age (Social, Economic, Political, Cultural Conditions and Women Novelists)

19.2.4 George Eliot Notes

With George Eliot we come to the most philosophical of all the major Victorian novelists, both
female and male. Philosophy is both her strength and weakness as a novelist. It keeps her from
falling into pathos or triviality, but at the same time gives her art an ultra serious and reflective
quality which makes it “heavy reading.” Even her humour-the faculty in which she doubtlessly is
quite rich-has about it the quality of ponderous reflective ness. But often there are some aphoristic
strokes which do tell-as the following:
“Animals are such agreeable friends; they ask no questions, they pass no criticisms.”
“What a man wants in a wife mostly is to make sure of one fool as’ll tell him he’s wise.”
“I’m not denyin’ the women are foolish-God Almighty made’em to match the men.”
“I’m not one of those who see the cat in the dairy and wonder what she’s come after.”
George Eliot’s important novels are the following:
The Mill on the Floss
AdamBede
Romola
Felix Holt
Daniel Deronda
Middlemarch.
All of them are marked by extreme seriousness of purpose and execution. As Samuel C. Chew
observes, “in George Eliot’s hands the novel was not primarily for entertainment but for the
serious discussion of moral issues” She is, indeed, too didactic and makes every incident a text for
moralistic expatiation. “She”, says the critic just quoted, “inculcates the importance of being
earnest: but the virtues so earnestly striven after-industry, self-restraint nscientiousness-are very
drab; ‘school-teacher’s virtues’ they have been unkindly called.” In her novels we invariably meet
with the clash of circumstances with the human will. She, indeed, believed that circumstances
influenced character, but she did not show circumstances entirely determining character. A man
called upon to choose between two women or a woman to choose between two men is the
common leitmotif of her novels. She emphasizes the need for a moral choice uninfluenced by any
selfish motives. She herself did not believe in any conventional moral creed and lived with Lewes
as his wife without marriage, in spite of the defamatory rebukes of her priggish contemporaries.
But inspite of her frank agnosticism and contempt for strait-jacketing traditionalism, she valued
ethics both in her life and her work as a novelist.
Another important feature of her novels is their very deep concern with human psychology. Her
novels are all novels of character. “She”, says Compton-Rickett, “was the first novelist to lay the
stress wholly upon character rather than incident; to make her stones spiritual rather than physical
dramas.” In her characterisation she displays both subtlety and variety. Her studies of the inner
man, but more particularly the inner woman, are marvellous. She puts all the emphasis on the
inside, very little on the outside. David Cecil observes in this connexion: “We do not remember
her serious characters by their appearance or the way they talk, indeed we do not remember these
things clearly at all. Her portraits are primarily portraits of the inner man.”
George Eliot excels at portraying the tragedy of unfulfilled female longings. She identifies herself
with her chief female characters and unfolds their inner feelings with masterly strokes. Compton-
Rickett points out: “Maggie’s cry was for fuller life, Ramola’s for ampler knowledge, Darothea’s
for larger opportunity, for doing good.’ These themes are dealt with by George Eliot with a
striking psychological profundity which makes her a very worthy forerunner of the psychological
novelists like Henry James. Let us conclude with David Cecil’s words: “She stands at the gateway
between the old novel and the new, a massive caryatid, heavy of countenance and uneasy of
attitude, but noble, monumental, profoundly impressive.”

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