Genre and Gender: The Case of George Eliot
[**draft only** for Utrecht March 29, 2008. Please do not cite without permission of author]
Moira Gatens
Over thirty years ago Michèle le Doeuff coined the phrase “the Hèloïse Complex” to
refer to a certain kind of erotico-theoretical transference between a philosopher and
his disciple or student.1 Although this transference is not restricted to women their
structural position in this little drama is not identical to that of men. The possibility of
taking over the position of ‘the one who knows’, to become the master in one’s turn,
is open to men – at least in principle – but closed to women. Hence the ‘complex’, if
not the transference, is sex-specific. Why is the position of ‘master’ or ‘philosopher’
all but closed to women? Here I can offer only a bare outline of le Doeuff’s thesis.
Women’s access to the position of the one who knows can be blocked in at least two
ways: first, the philosophical imaginary is structured such that women are associated
not with the subject of knowing but with the objects of knowledge (nature,
embodiment, the passions); and second, institutional structures and sexed norms have
functioned, historically, to exclude women from, for example, learning Latin, or
entering University. In her early account of this complex le Doeuff referred to
Hipparchia and Crates, Hèloïse and Abelard, Princess Elisabeth and Descartes, and
Simone de Beauvoir and Sartre. In each case, a woman who was not able to enjoy an
independent access to philosophy (in general) comes to fulfill the role of admiring
pupil, reflecting back to the master the completeness and authority of his (particular)
philosophy.
1
See ‘Cheveux longs, idées courtes’, in L’Imaginaire philosophique, Paris, Editions
Payot, 1980. Translated by Colin Gordon as ‘Long Hair, Short Ideas’, in The
Philosophical Imaginary, London, Athlone, 1989. An English translation of an earlier
version this chapter appeared as ‘Woman and Philosophy’, in Radical Philosophy, 17
(Summer 1977), pp. 2–11.
Over a decade later, in Hipparchia’s Choice, le Doeuff revised her original notion of
the Hèloïse Complex in a way that allowed for greater complexity and historical
variation.2 The point that concerns us here is the correction that she made in the
context of the relationship between de Beauvoir and Sartre. In the later book le
Doeuff says ‘the ‘Hèloïse Complex seems not to be so crippling as I formerly meant it
to appear’ and she asked: ‘can one escape it [the Hèloïse Complex] on the quiet and
produce philosophy independently, on condition of course that one does not attempt
to pose as a philosopher?’ (HC, 165). In the case of de Beauvoir, le Doeuff thinks that
‘she did produce philosophy. But she “did not see herself” doing it’ (HC, 164). Did de
Beauvoir produce philosophy or literature and what hangs on the difference? If we
consider philosophical writing and literary writing as distinct genres, are these genres
inevitably gendered?3 Is philosophical writing intrinsically a ‘masculine’ genre and
literature, mutatis mutandis, ‘feminine’?
The notion that one could explore ‘genre’ and ‘gender’ as a conceptual couple
through the study of historical couples is the kernel of the idea for this paper. I
consider the couple comprised by Marian Evans (1819-1880) – better known as
George Eliot, author of Middlemarch – and her partner in life, George Henry Lewes
(1817-1878) alongside the process of formation of the genre of the English realist
2
Later, in The Sex of Knowing, trans. Kathryn Hamer and Lorraine Code.
New York and London: Routledge, 2003, le Doeuff further expands the list of couples
she treats to include Harriet Taylor and JS Mill. In their case, friendship marks them
off from etc etc….
3
I am well aware of the problem of applying what was an Anglo-American concept
of ‘gender’ to le Doeuff’s work. However, the focus of this paper demands an analysis
of the co-implication of gender and genre and so I defer this issue to another
time/place. See …. for the misapplication of the concept of ‘gender’ in French
language authors.
2
novel. In the course of my presentation I hope to examine some rules and conventions
that govern various kinds of coupling: between Marian Evans and G H Lewes,
between gender and genre, and between George Eliot and the realist novel. The
couple formed by Marian Evans and G H Lewes presents a further challenge to le
Doeuff’s formulation of the Hèloïse Complex, even in its revised form. It was Lewes
who acted as mirror for Marian Evans – enthusiastically reflecting back to her the
genius, power and brilliance of George Eliot. According to Gordon Haight, Eliot’s
biographer, Lewes censored her incoming letters, and newspaper and journal reviews,
allowing through only the most positive and gratifying opinions about her work.
Haight quotes from a letter of Eliot’s contemporary, the popular novelist Mrs
Oliphant, whose envy of Evans’s situation is palpable: ‘Should I have done better if I
had been kept, like her, in a mental greenhouse and taken care of?’ In a similar vein
Edith Simcox, a great admirer of Evans, wrote that ‘we owe to Mr. Lewes the
complete works of George Eliot, not one of which would have been written or even
planned without the inspiriting influence of his constant encouragement’. Haight
himself, who is very sympathetic to his subject, also judges that without Lewes’s
gentle encouragement and fierce protectiveness ‘she [Evans] would probably have
written nothing.’4
Lewes acted as Eliot’s ‘agent’, or intermediary, with the publisher, John Blackwood.
Referring to George Eliot as ‘my clerical friend’, the part played by Lewes was
essential to the stratagem that ensured the anonymity of Marian Evans, the charade of
her manliness, and her moral authority as ‘a cleric’. Her first works of fiction were
three short stories that were later put together and published as Scenes from Clerical
4
All three quotations are from Gordon S. Haight (1968) George Eliot. A Biography,
OUP, p. 369. Later biographers, including feminists, would reiterate the point. See ….
3
Life. The multiple ironies of the ruse that Marian Evans and Lewes played on
Blackwood and the reading public will emerge shortly. For now it is sufficient to note
that Lewes stressed in his correspondence with Blackwood that his clerical friend,
who wanted to be known only by the pseudonym George Eliot, was a hypersensitive
soul, with ‘a shy, shrinking, ambitious nature’, who would be scared off by the barest
hint of criticism.5 In this way Lewes ensured that any problems that Blackwood had
with Eliot’s manuscripts would be conveyed to him first and that, if they reached
Marian Evans at all, they would first have passed through his gentle filter. If anyone
in this relationship occupied the feminine, nurturing position, mirroring the genius of
the great artist, it was George Henry Lewes who performed this role for Marian
Evans. However, in this presentation I want to go a little deeper than this. I wish to
uncouple some familiar ways of thinking about gender and genre in order to then
embody these elements in a different way: to re-couple or reincarnate them through
the study of this particular union of a man and a woman in order to draw out the
historical, social, and political specificity of the notions of both ‘gender’ and ‘genre’
as well as the relations between them.
1.
The Question of Gender
What is (or was) the gender of George Eliot? The woman who was to take the male
nom de plume ‘George Eliot’ was born Mary Anne Evans. After the death of her
mother she dropped the ‘e’ from Anne and signed her letters Mary Ann Evans. She
was from a religious background and during her school years she was exposed to
Evangelical Christianity and became very devout. In addition to religious fervour,
Evans’ schooling provided her with an unusually solid education that she continued to
5
Haight (1968, 215)
4
build on throughout her whole life.6 Perhaps partly through the influence of the
Freethinking circles to which she was exposed when she moved with her father to
Coventry, she underwent a crisis of faith and refused to attend Church, much to the
consternation of her father. This episode, which she referred to in her letters as the
‘Holy War’, was resolved when, after several months, she gave in to her father’s
demand that she keep up appearances by resuming her attendance at church provided
that he accepted that her new convictions were firm, sincere and deeply held.
During this period Evans undertook a translation of David Strauss’ Life of Jesus,
Critically Examined (1846). This was to be the first step in a long standing association
with German philosophy and the ‘Higher Criticism’ movement that understood
religion and the Bible in terms of mythology or anthropology. In the coming years she
would translate Spinoza’s Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (1849), his Ethics (1856)
and Ludwig Feuerbach’s The Essence of Christianity (1854). This work is important
to note here because her philosophical credentials were exceptionally strong and her
subsequent fictional and non-fictional writing never lost this philosophical dimension.
After the death of her father in 1849, Mary Ann Evans was freed from the role of
nurse and housekeeper and with a small annuity she made her way to London. In 1851
she took lodging in the house of the publisher John Chapman and, as if to mark this
new phase of her independent life, changed her name again to Marian Evans. In the
same year Chapman bought the Westminster Review, a periodical founded in 1823 by
Jeremy Bentham and James Mill and later edited by J S Mill. This journal was the
preeminent organ for the dissemination of the ideas of the Philosophical Radicals.
Although Chapman was the owner of the journal it is widely held that he lacked the
6
Her language proficiency, for example, included French, German, Latin, Ancient
Greek, Hebrew, etc. Her knowledge of science and philosophy was wide and deep.
5
time, ingenuity and astuteness to make a success of it. Evans became its clandestine
editor and under her stewardship it flourished.
It is difficult for us today to grasp quite how extraordinary it was for a woman to hold
such a position in 1851. Laurel Brake stresses the anomalous position of Evans and
states that ‘no other woman editor existed at the time in the UK’.7 Evans’ anonymity
was absolutely crucial to the success of the journal. Although the identity of some of
the contributors to the Westminster Review would have been known, the journalistic
convention of the time was that the reviews, articles and opinion pieces were
published anonymously, that is, without signature. Nevertheless, the authors were
predominantly and unambiguously assumed to be men. Hence, both as covert editor
and as frequent contributor to the journal, Marian Evans’ writing apprenticeship
proceeded behind the mask of an authoritative male speaking position. To give just
the flavour of this assumed authority I offer two examples. In her 1854 essay on
‘Women in France: Madame de Sablé, she aligns herself with the male reader by
identifying with his supposition that we leave the ladies to their own topics of
conversation while we ‘”crackle the Times” at our ease’ (SEP, 16, emphasis added).
In a later review, concerned with the social position of women, Evans wrote
‘[a]nything is more endurable than to challenge our established formulæ about
women, or to run the risk of looking up to our wives instead of looking down on
them’ (SEP, 337, emphasis added). Although we cannot associate a particular ‘name’
or ‘signature’ with Evans’ writing from this period of her life, we know that what she
produced was widely assumed to be from the hand of a man. This early training must
7
L. Brake, ‘The Westminster and Gender at mid-Century’, Victorian Periodicals
Review, 33:3, Fall, 2000, 251. The ‘women’s periodicals’, started by Bessie Rayner
Parkes and others, date from 1858. See Brake 2000, footnote 14, p. 268.
6
have had a pronounced influence on the development of her writing style. If we
suppose that the time Evans spent editing and writing for the Westminster was
formative for the writer ‘George Eliot’ then the question of George Eliot’s gender
must be viewed through the prism of the conventions and exclusions that marked the
genre of ‘intellectual journalism’ in mid-19th century Britain.
The position of editor put Marian Evans at the centre of the intellectual scene in
London. After a failed love affair with Herbert Spencer Marian Evans became
friendly with the freelance journalist, theatre critic, philosopher and amateur
naturalist, George Henry Lewes. They fell in love. However, Lewes was already
married but estranged from his wife.8 Unable to divorce his wife, all he could offer
Marian Evans was his sincere commitment to their union without the social benefit or
safeguard of legal sanction. In 1854 Marian Evans and Lewes began to live together
as husband and wife. This new arrangement brought about her next name change:
Mrs. Lewes. As I indicated previously, the decision to try her hand at novel writing,
and to do so under the name ‘George Eliot’, was the joint progeny of this couple. The
long and happy relationship between Evans and Lewes was to last until Lewes’ death
in 1878. Although Marian Evans was to live for another two years, George Eliot, it
seems, did not survive the death of Lewes. No further works were written under that
name.
8
The story is complex - in brief, Lewes and his wife, Agnes, held ‘freethinking’ ideas
about love and marriage. Lewes’ friend Thornton Hunt was in a sexual relationship
with Agnes who gave birth to a child by him. Because Lewes registered the birth of
this child under his own name he thereby condoned Agnes’ adultery and so foreclosed
the possibility of divorcing her on that ground. All this took place before he met and
fell in love with Marian Evans. Agnes continued to bear children by Hunt and Evans
and Lewes contributed to their financial support.
7
Seventeen months after Lewes’ death, and to everyone’s surprise, Marian Evans
married John Cross, a family friend and financial advisor to the Leweses who was
twenty years junior to Evans.9 Thus, Evans legally became Mrs. Mary Ann Cross. She
died within a year of her marriage. Her tombstone bears the simple but intriguing
inscription:
Here lies the Body
of
“George Eliot”
Mary Ann Cross
On my count, by the time that ‘body’ was laid to rest it had enjoyed at least six names,
five of them recognizably ‘female’, and one ‘male’. Of these six names only two –
strictly speaking – were legitimate: the name she was born with (Mary Ann(e) Evans)
and the name she died with (Mary Ann Cross).10 Of special interest here are the two
‘illegitimate’ names she assumed and under which she lived and worked for the
greater part of her life: Mrs. Lewes and George Eliot.11 In what follows I hope to
show the ways in which these two identities were connected. In addition I wish to
show the ironic power enjoyed by the ‘lawless’ triad formed by G H Lewes, Marian
Evans and George Eliot to lay down the law for the genre of the realist English novel.
9
Previously, both Lewes and Evans had referred to Cross as ‘nephew’.
The section of my paper dealing with Evans’ various names is greatly indebted to
Rosemarie Bodenheimer’s chapter ‘A woman of many names’ in George Levine, ed.,
The Cambridge Companion to George Eliot, Cambridge, CUP, 2001, pp. 20-37. See
also her The Real Life of Mary Ann Evans: George Eliot, Her Letters and Fiction,
1994, Cornell UP.
11
Bodenheimer points out that ironically ‘Mary Ann Evans Lewes’ became her
‘legal’ name, for a short time, after Lewes’ death. Evans changed her name by deed
poll in order to facilitate access to her finances and assets, all of which were held in
Lewes’ name! See Bodenheimer 1994, p. 114.
10
8
However, before turning to the question of genre, it is necessary to stress some of the
more obvious motivations for adopting these two names outside of, or beyond, the
law. There are at least two reasons why Marian Evans adopted the name Mrs. Lewes.
First, at the time it would have been impossible for them to travel together, take a
hotel room together (and they traveled extensively in Germany and Italy), or rent
lodgings together without the pretence of marriage. Second, although it was legally
impossible for them to marry because of Lewes’ inability to divorce his wife, they
considered themselves more tightly bound to each other – that is, married - than many
who enjoyed the sanction of law. Both understood their situation to be constrained by
social and religious conventions which they did not endorse. This is not to say, of
course, that they did not feel the brunt of such conventions. Marian Evans, especially,
paid very dearly for her decision to live with Lewes.12 The sexual double standard
ensured that he continued ‘to be invited to dinner’ whereas Marian Evans suffered a
virtual social death.13 The irregularity of their union added a further incentive for the
adoption of the authorial mask of George Eliot, namely, to escape the scandalous
reputation that would attach to any work that issued from the hand of Marian Evans.14
Hence, the adoption of both names – Mrs. Lewes and George Eliot – shares a
common root. A further reason for the adoption of the name George Eliot was offered
to the publisher Blackwood: ‘if George Eliot turns out a dull dog and an ineffective
12
The momentousness of the decision might be gleaned from Chapman’s alarm when
he heard the news: ‘I can only pray, against hope, that he may prove constant to her;
otherwise she is utterly lost’ quoted in Haight, 1968, p. 167, emphasis original.
13
As Evans wrote in a letter ‘Women who are satisfied with [light and easily broken
ties] do not act as I have done – they obtain what they desire and are still invited to
dinner.’ (GEL, II, 215, emphasis original)
14
It was not only Evans’ lifestyle that was seen as scandalous. Her association with
German biblical criticism through her translations of Strauss and Feuerbach also
meant that her name was associated with atheism. By the mores of the period, her
‘atheism’ and her lifestyle would have amounted to gross immorality. The only book
ever to have been published under the name ‘Marian Evans’ is her translation of
Feuerbach.
9
writer – a mere flash in the pan – I, for one, am determined to cut him on the first
intimation of that disagreeable fact’ (GEL, II 309).15 One of the many ironies of this
story is the fact that it was George Eliot who opened the way for Marian Evans
readmission into ‘polite’ society.
2.
The Question of Genre
In the same year that Marian Evans began to write fiction she published two essays in
the Westminster on aesthetic and literary theory: a review of Ruskin’s Modern
Painters, Vol. III (April, 1856) and an essay entitled ‘Silly Novels by Lady Novelists’
(October 1856). These essays provide invaluable insight into her philosophy of art
and its connection to ethical life. In the first essay she praised Ruskin’s approach to
art in the following terms: ‘[t]he truth of infinite value that he teaches is realism – the
doctrine that all truth and beauty are to be attained by a humble and faithful study of
nature, and not by substituting vague forms, bred by imagination on the mists of
feeling, in place of definite, substantial reality. The thorough acceptance of this
doctrine would change our life … [but it] is not enough simply to teach truth … we
want it to be so taught as to compel men’s attention and sympathy.’ (SEP, 368,
emphasis on ‘realism’ original; subsequent emphasis is mine). It is worthwhile taking
the time to unpack this quotation because it encapsulates the core of Evans’ aesthetics
and points us in the direction of her ethical stance. A superficial reading of this
passage might conclude that for Evans the highest art involves the faithful
representation of reality (mimesis) and that imagination and feeling – as commonly
suggested by philosophers – are inevitably sources of error. But Evans’ view is more
complex and subtle than this. The creative power of the active imagination to select
15
This letter to Blackwood, written by Marian Evans, is signed: George Eliot.
10
and combine in new ways ‘distinctly known’ (SEP, 372) elements from life, in a
sincere and truthful manner, is both the aesthetic and the moral ground on which our
fellow feeling – especially sympathy – can be cultivated. Note that on this formulation
she stresses the importance of all three capacities – imagination, knowledge and
feeling – functioning harmoniously in unison. Truth alone is impotent to affect or
motivate right conduct. But truth that is ‘felt’ through an active imaginative capacity,
as well as ‘known’, affects our entire being and so changes not simply what we know
but what we are or can become. This is, in part, what she means when she claims that
the acceptance of Ruskin’s doctrine of realism would ‘change our life’. This is an
exceptionally complex issue and here I can merely indicate that Evans’ adoption of a
naturalistic and immanent worldview means that she must forgo the comforting
illusions of transcendentally guaranteed truth and of a God-given morality. The only
sure basis for human community is reflective fellow feeling16 and truth and sincerity
in art is paramount because of its unique ability to arouse and refine our sympathetic
capacities. False representations of life and nature promote false feelings and end by
harming human relationships and undermining the foundation of human community.
The point might be brought more sharply into focus by turning to her other essay:
‘Silly Novels by Lady Novelists’. Although this essay is witty and playful its intent is
no less serious than the review of Ruskin. Evans intends to ridicule a certain genre of
writing: fantasy novels written by women for women.17 Such novels, she writes,
16
Eliot’s disillusion with the power of either religion or philosophy (or, at least, moral
‘theory’) to supply certain maxims for life is recorded in an early letter where she
writes that because ‘agreement between intellects seems unattainable … we turn to
the truth of feeling as the only universal bond of union’ (GEL, I, 162)
17
In this essay she identifies four sub-genres of the lady novelists’ ‘silly novels’: the
‘mind-and-millinery’, the ‘oracular’, the ‘white neck-cloth’, and the ‘modernantique’.
11
present what their authors ‘have seen and heard, and what they have not seen and
heard, with equal unfaithfulness’ (SEP, 142, emphasis original). Like a bad drawing,
these works ‘represent nothing’ (SEP, 158) and their authors lack not only the
intellectual power to produce good literature but also ‘those moral qualities that
contribute to literary excellence – patient diligence, a sense of the responsibility
involved in publication, and an appreciation of the sacredness of the writer’s art’
(SEP, 161). Taking into account that in this piece Evans targets female authors from
an assumed male speaking position, some find it difficult not to read it as the
expression of an anti-feminist, even misogynist, attitude. I am more inclined to read it
as a defense of what women authors could achieve and an attack on the harm inflicted
on women readers by these ‘silly novels’.18
Evans was an astute judge of the sexual politics of her time. This essay makes clear
her view that women’s consumption of silly novels suits the wishes of some men that
literature proper should remain their exclusive reserve. She writes: ‘By a peculiar
thermometric adjustment, when a women’s talent is at zero, journalistic approbation is
at the boiling pitch; when she attains mediocrity, it is already at no more than summer
heat; and if ever she reaches excellence, critical enthusiasm drops to the freezing
point’ (SEP, 161). In short, the ‘mere fact of feminine authorship’ should not be taken
as sufficient reason for admiration. That some critics would have it otherwise is
ground for suspicion concerning their motivations especially given that the
assessment of excellent literature written by women is so often perverse. It is worth
18
Consider, in this connection, the kind of literature (‘silly novels’) favoured by Mrs
Transome (FH), Gwendolene Harleth (DD), Rosamund Vincy (MM) and Esther Lyon
(FH) and the misleading expectations of life it promoted. The ‘hard facts’ of women’s
existence and an accurate grasp of the possibilities for action open to women would
have been more helpful to them.
12
noting here that in addition to Martineau, Bronte and Gaskell, Evans had in an earlier
essay fulsomely praised Madame de Sablé, George Sand, and a number of other,
especially French, women writers.19 Nevertheless, the likely expectations about genre
that would attach to a female author would have added another motivation for Evans
to adopt a male pseudonym when she resolved to write novels. In any case, the irony
of the timing of ‘Silly Novels by Lady Novelists’ and Evans’ decision to try fiction
writing is unavoidable for the contemporary theorist who is privy to the identity of the
author. It was only a matter of weeks between the publication of this essay and the
commencement of the career of George Eliot.
Evans was determined not to become a ‘lady novelist’ or to write ‘silly novels’. She
had the negative image before her – an image she herself had produced. So what is the
genre in which she chose to work? There were writers she greatly admired – George
Sand, Walter Scott, Goethe – but her artistic vision (and I use the term advisedly) was,
I believe, an emergent one. In the 1850s Lewes’ views on art and literature also were
evolving and their joint study of, and discussions about, various literary and
philosophical works was an ongoing project throughout their lives (the list of works is
renowned: Shakespeare, Goethe, Heine, Dante, Wordsworth, Milton, Darwin, Comte,
JS Mill, and so on).
In 1858, in a review of recent German fiction in the Westminster, Lewes offered his
views on realism in art. One passage warrants quoting at length:
A distinction is drawn between Art and Reality, and an antithesis established
between Realism and Idealism which would never have gained acceptance had
19
See ‘Women in France: Madame de Sablé (October, 1854), in SEP, pp. 8-37.
13
not men in general lost sight of the fact that Art is a Representation of Reality –
a Representation which inasmuch as it is not the thing itself, but only represents
it, must necessarily be limited by the nature of its medium; the canvas of the
painter, the marble of the sculptor, the chords of the musician, and the language
of the writer, each bring with them peculiar laws; but while thus limited … Art
always aims at the representation of Reality, i.e. of Truth; and no departure from
truth is permissible, except as inevitably lies in the nature of the medium itself.
Realism is thus the basis of all Art, and its antithesis is not Idealism, but
Falsism. … To misrepresent the forms of ordinary life is no less an offence then
to misrepresent the forms of ideal life: a pug-nosed Apollo, or Jupiter in a greatcoat, would not be more truly shocking to an artistic mind than are those
senseless falsifications of nature into which incompetence is led under the
pretence of idealizing, of “beautifying” nature. Either give us true peasants, or
leave them untouched; either paint no drapery at all, or paint it with the utmost
fidelity; either keep your people silent, or make them speak the idiom of their
class. 20
Lewes’ refusal of the opposition between realism and idealism is crucial to an
understanding his aesthetic theory. The ‘ideal’ for him does not correlate with false or
imaginary representations of reality. On the contrary, his notion of ‘the ideal’ is more
akin to the notion of ‘the virtual’. In another work Lewes wrote that the Ideal is ‘what
is virtually given, when the process of Inference anticipates and intuites [sic] what
will be or would be Feeling under the immediate stimulus of the object.’21 Giving
20
GH Lewes, ‘Realism in Art: Recent German Fiction’, Westminster Review, 70,
1858, p. 493, emphasis original.
21
Problems of Life and Mind, vol. II, pp. 16-17, quoted in G. Levine, The Realistic
Imagination, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1981, p. 348, footnote 23,
emphasis original.
14
expression to the virtual – through painting, through sculpture, through music,
through literature - requires imagination and inventiveness and is essentially an
ethical, as well as an aesthetic, endeavour. Just as Evans had insisted upon ‘the
responsibility involved in publication’, Lewes entreats those who are incapable of
representing ‘truth’ in his special sense of fidelity to the real – which includes the
ideal or the virtual - to refrain from constructing ‘false’ realities. Far from conceiving
the process of aesthetic construction as amounting to a ‘faithful copy’ Lewes insists
on the ’Principle of Vision’ of the artist, a principle that deploys the active faculty of
the imagination that ‘selects’, ‘recombines’ and ‘creates new objects and new
relations’.22 This principle is at work in science and philosophy no less than in art:
‘Philosophy and Art both render the invisible visible by imagination’.23
I have dwelt at some length on the aesthetic views of Evans and Lewes because I want
to show the particular manner in which their approach to Art, including literature, was
deeply, if not typically, empirical and ‘experimental’.24 Rosemary Ashton confirms
this picture of Lewes and Evans (and George Eliot) as pioneers in the field of
aesthetics: ‘The Victorian age was not, on the whole, an age rich in literary theory; a
naïve realism pervaded literary criticism in the periodicals. Only Lewes, George Eliot,
and Ruskin wrote more thoughtfully about the relationship between literature and
22
GH Lewes, ‘The Principles of Success in Literature’, in R. Ashton, ed., Versatile
Victorian: Selected Critical Writings of George Henry Lewes, London, Bristol
Classical Press, 1992, p. 239.
23
GH Lewes, ‘The Principles of Success in Literature’, in R. Ashton, ed., Versatile
Victorian: Selected Critical Writings of George Henry Lewes, London, Bristol
Classical Press, 1992, p. 229. Though each – philosophy and art – do so according to
their own distinctive processes.
24
In case some might think I am unduly collapsing the respective aesthetic views of
Evans and Lewes, the dense passage in Impressions of Theophratus Such on ‘intense
inward representation’ and its similarity to Lewes’ ‘Principle of Vision’, might be
noted. See ITS, p. 110. See also Adam Bede, Chap. 17.
15
‘reality’ as one more complex than a mere copying procedure.’25 And it is here, I
believe, that the ‘art’ and the shared ‘life’ of Marian Evans and Lewes converge: in
their lives, as in their philosophical and literary works, they did not ‘copy’ what had
gone before but rather ‘create[d] new objects and new relations’. The contravention of
the social rules, norms and laws of their present placed them outside convention but
not outside of ethics that, on their account, may be known through the study of lawgoverned nature and the ‘natural history’ of human societies. The ethical picture they
present is thoroughly naturalistic and involves an ongoing process of both discovery
and invention. The life they constructed together, no less than their written work,
respected rules and laws that they took to be both necessary and obligatory. But how
is one to ascertain what are these rules and laws? Science alone is insufficient because
life, in all its splendid complexity ‘is a great deal more than science’.26 An
understanding of the enduring meaning of religion, the ‘mystery’ of love and
forgiveness, or the beauty of a work of art, are beyond the ken of science. But such
understanding can be sought by methods analogous to those of science: keen
observation, the exercise of a disciplined imagination, experimentation, and
hypothesis testing. These methods are precisely those that distinguish the realist
novel.
3.
Re-coupling Gender and Genre
In the previous two sections I have left hanging both the question of George Eliot’s
gender and, to a lesser degree, the question of genre. An adequate response to the
questions raised up to this point of my discussion requires an integrated approach to
25
R. Ashton, ed., Versatile Victorian: Selected Critical Writings of George Henry
Lewes, London, Bristol Classical Press, 1992, p. 8.
26
Evans, ‘The Natural History of German Life’ [1856], in SEP, p. 128.
16
the name George Eliot and the genre with which that name is coupled: the realist
novel. George Eliot wrote alongside Evans’ and Lewes’ theorizations of literature
and, I suggest, coevolved with the ‘experimental’ genre of the realist novel. This
genre insisted on getting the philosophy – if the novel was to include philosophy –
correct, on the getting the science – if the novel was to include science – correct, on
getting the history – if the novel was to include history - correct. This is one side of
the ‘realism’ of George Eliot’s work. But there is another side too. The developing
genre also was an experiment in literary technique that allowed a multiplicity of
perspectives to emerge both within and between the characters it represented. It gave
material form to virtual possibilities at the same as it showed how and why any given
possibility might be made actual. George Eliot, it would seem, was a philosopher, a
scientist and an historian, as well as a novelist. The genre of the realist novel, I
suggest, necessarily trespasses on philosophical, scientific and historical territory in
its drive towards a true (in Lewes’ sense) representation of life. George Eliot, I
maintain, brought together genres of writing that usually are kept apart – the novels
are both philosophical and literary.
Middlemarch, a creation of Eliot’s middle period, has been called ‘the fullest
achievement of English realism’ and ‘the greatest realist novel in the language’.27 In
the Prelude to that novel Eliot wrote that our knowledge of ‘the history of man’
consists in attending to how that ‘mysterious mixture [i.e. a human being] behaves
under the varying experiments of Time’ (MM, 3). Repeating, in a letter, the allusion
to life itself as a kind of experiment, Evans referred to her novels as ‘simply a set of
experiments in life – an endeavour to see what our thought and emotion may be
27
G. Levine, ‘George Eliot and the art of Realism’, in George Levine, ed., The
Cambridge Companion to George Eliot, Cambridge, CUP, 2001, p. 16 & p. 18.
17
capable of – what stores of motive, actual or hinted as possible, give promise of a
better after which we may strive – what gains from past revelations and discipline we
must strive to keep hold of as something more than shifting theory’ (GEL, VI, 216).
Despite the contemporary tendency to judge realism as a naïve art form associated
with conservative politics, realism, as it was understood by Evans and Lewes, and as
it was practiced by George Eliot, involved the struggle to ‘create new objects’ of
knowledge and bring into being ‘new relations’ within society. This struggle was
constrained by the sexual politics and morality of the time. ‘George Eliot’ was both
the embodiment of that struggle, and the site of resistance to the laws and norms
whose foundations were under challenge from science and philosophy.
The novels written under the name of George Eliot can be viewed as experiments
designed to give expression to realizable28 pathways out of the gridlock of conflicting
religious, social and sexual values in 19th century England. The study of human being,
value and meaning from a naturalistic perspective is a constant in all Eliot’s novels.
The challenge is to show that immanent life can generate value, meaning and human
fellowship. For example, consider Silas Marner the Weaver of Raveloe. This novella
opens with Silas’ unjust exile from his tight-knit religious community for a crime he
did not commit. Like the God of Job, Eliot strips Silas’ life of all that makes it
intelligible (religion, community values), of all that makes it bearable (family, friends,
love, belonging), and everything that makes it the life of a particular individual (the
ability to link a past with the present and so the capacity to imagine a future). The
interlacing of knowledge, feeling, and imagination that make up the fabric of his life
28
I say ‘realizable’ because Marian Evans was not a ‘revolutionary’ or ‘utopian’
thinker. Her view of social change was ‘evolutionary’ or ‘incrementalist’. See ‘The
Natural History of German Life’ [1856], in SEP.
18
is torn and the first half of Silas Marner shows how Silas’ human being progressively
unravels, in the aptly named village of Raveloe, where he has taken refuge. Even
though Raveloe is probably just a few hundred miles from his home, for Silas it might
as well be another country. Eliot writes:
Even people whose lives have been made various by learning, sometimes find it
hard to keep a fast hold on their habitual views of life, on their faith in the
Invisible, nay, on the sense that their past joys and sorrows are a real
experience, when the beings around them know nothing of their history, and
share none of their ideas […] Minds that have been unhinged from their old
faith and love, have perhaps sought this Lethean influence in exile, in which the
past becomes dreamy because its symbols have all vanished, and the present too
is dreamy because it is linked with no memories. But even their experience may
hardly enable them thoroughly to imagine what was the effect on a simple
weaver like Silas Marner, when he left his own country and people and came to
settle in Raveloe. (SM, 15, emphasis original)
With the skill to produce a valuable commodity – linen – Silas is not driven away
from Raveloe but nor is he accepted as a member of the community. Cut off from his
past, and unable to connect with his new milieu, Silas lives in the meaningless present
in the manner of an insect. Insofar as he is prevented from linking up the various parts
of his life he also is unable to take responsibility for it and so is reduced to an
uncannily inhuman passivity. Robbed of his habitual ethos he ceases to think, to feel,
or to desire and, ‘like a spider’ he works from instinct, ‘impulse’, and ‘without
reflection’ just as if he were ‘a spinning insect’ (SM, 16-17).
19
Incapable of participating in the life, values and meanings characteristic of provincial
Raveloe, Silas sets up his loom in an isolated cottage where he lives, works, and eats
in solitude. This is the ‘insect-like existence into which his nature had shrunk’ (SM,
18). His one consolation is the gold coins –payment for his linen – that he begins to
hoard. He considers them his companions or ‘familiars’. In this solipsistic world the
fetishised coins have become his family and he anticipates the coins to come ‘as if
they had been unborn children’ (SM, 21). Silas’ life has been reduced ‘to the
functions of weaving and hoarding’ (SM, 20). He has become part of a machine for
weaving gold and he ‘has no meaning standing apart’ (SM, 20) from his loom.
The first event that propels Silas into the community of Raveloe is the theft of his
gold. As the ‘exciting’ story of the robbery filters through all the social layers of
Raveloe, Silas becomes a person of intense interest. He is asked to tell and re-tell his
story and obliged to listen to the various theories of his neighbours about what might
have happened to his gold and who might be responsible for its disappearance. One of
the more good-hearted neighbours is the wheelwright’s wife, Dolly Winthrop, who
consoles, advises and befriends Silas. It is through Dolly’s patience and kindness that
Silas, eventually, comes to tell his tale in full and so opens his closed life to the
possibility of new connections provided by sympathetic fellow-feeling. But his
despair does not abate. He still longs for his ‘familiars’, the gold. To his utter
amazement, one snowy evening, the gold mysteriously reappears. The short-sighted
Silas gazes upon the gold in disbelief:
The heap of gold seemed to glow and got larger beneath his agitated gaze. He
leaned forward at last, and stretched forth his hand; but instead of the hard coin
20
with the familiar resisting outline, his fingers encountered soft warm curls. (SM,
110)
Searching around the cottage for a clue to how the infant came to be there he finds her
mother, lying dead in the snow. Just as the theft of Silas’ gold thrust him into the
community of Raveloe, its transmogrification into the golden-headed child also draws
him closer.
The fairy tale quality of Silas Marner is apparent – ‘the gold had turned into the child’
(SM, 122). This two-year old child – whom he names Eppie – will enlarge his life by
connecting him up with different others. In a way that cuts across our gender
expectations, it is the need of an infant that brings Silas back to his humanity. From
the time of her first cry – ‘Mammy’ – Silas is as responsive to Eppie as any mother
(SM, 111). Unlike the golden heads of his hoard, which separated him from his
fellows, Eppie’s golden head draws others to him and he to them. Eventually, Silas
comes ‘to appropriate the forms of custom and belief which were the mould of
Raveloe life; and as, with reawakening sensibilities, memory also reawakened, he had
begun to ponder over the elements of his old faith, and blend them with his new
impressions, till he recovered a consciousness of unity between past and present.’
(SM, 142-43).
There is so much one could say about the charming fable of Silas Marner – most of
the story has been left out here. But my purpose in alluding to this story is not to retell it but to show that Eliot’s commitment to truth, realism and empiricism does not
exclude the frame of a fairytale. The return of meaning and value to Silas - after his
descent to ‘insect life’ – shows that loving and being loved, forgiveness, and
21
belonging are values embodied in human relationships that - in themselves - are
‘sacred’.29 Silas Marner can be read as a meditation on the immanent meaning and
value of human life and on the concrete relations that make life worthwhile.
Just as Silas’ character develops by cutting across normative gender expectations, so I
suggest does that of the author. If I resist – until the end – the demand to bring George
Eliot under the ‘law’ of sexual difference or to call that name to account by the rule of
‘gender identity’, this is because I do not want to put myself in the same company as,
for example, the unimaginative wife of Thomas Carlyle. When Jane Carlyle was
asked about the ‘scandalous’ Leweses in 1865, she is reported to have said:
When we first heard that the strong woman of the Westminster Review had gone
off with a man we all know, it was as startling as if we had heard that a woman
we knew went off with the strong man in the circus. But that the partners in this
enterprise set themselves up as moralists was even more of a surprise. A
marvelous teacher of morals, surely, and still more marvelous in that other
character, [she means, I assume, George Eliot], for which nature has not
provided her with the outfit supposed to be essential.30
A ‘strong woman’ and a ‘strong man’, the setting: a circus, where the star turn,
George Eliot, lacks the ‘essential’ equipment nature normally provides as
confirmation of manhood! So much of what was written under the name of George
Eliot pulls against this haughty and reductive judgment. Then again, Jane Carlyle
perhaps grasped something important about the relationship between Marian Evans
and Lewes, and their progeny, George Eliot. Their relationship was a spectacle that
29
The influence of Feuerbach’s philosophy of value from The Essence of Christianity
is important to note here.
30
C. G. Duffy, Conversations with Carlyle, 1892, quoted in P. Rose, Parallel Lives,
New York, Vintage books, 1983, p. 198.
22
amused and shocked the public and the performative dimension of their lives was
unavoidable, especially as the fame of George Eliot increased. But a circus might also
be understood as a place where several paths intersect, as in ‘Piccadilly Circus’. My
preference is to think of the name of ‘George Eliot’ as a nexus: an open space where
many forces – historical, social, sexual, and intellectual – intersect. I prefer to think of
George Eliot in terms of a potent multiplicity that expressed the powers and the
longings, the curiosity and the knowledge, the passion and the wisdom, of both
Marian Evans and George Henry Lewes.
23