CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME 
 OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT 
 FUND GIVEN IN 1891 BY 
 
 HENRY WILLIAMS SAGE 
 
George Eliot 
 
 and her heroines; a study, by 
 
 DATE DUE 
 
 
 ->'*>^-,r,»y,,;,r, 
 
 M 
 
 F-ntNTED IN U.S A. 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tiiis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
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 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013456557 
 
>-^wi^iirrw^ps.i|i[,^5,77~ 
 
 GEORGE ELIOT. 
 (From a photograph by tht London Stereoscopic Company.) 
 
PEORGE ELIOT 
 
 and Her Heroines 
 
 a Btaba 
 
 BY 
 
 ABBA GOOLD WOOLSON 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE 
 
 1886 
 
 R 
 

 ^^ A.^^^tG 
 
 Copyright, 1886, by Harper &: Brothers. 
 
 A II rights reserved. 
 
 ^:5sC\Q 
 
 '€- 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 I. GEORGE ELIOT AS A LITERARY ARTIST. 
 
 Data Necessary for an Estimate of her Mind and Works, 3. 
 
 Permanency of her Fame, 4. 
 
 Great Qualities which Promise this, 4. 
 
 Characterization, 5. 
 
 Her Characters Real and Many-sided, 5. 
 
 Subjective Treatment, 6. 
 
 Growth, 7. 
 
 Range of Characters, 8. 
 
 Her Chief Successes, 9. 
 
 Children as Portrayed by Shakespeare, 9. 
 
 Her Failures, 10. 
 
 Portrait of Savonarola, II. 
 The Action of the Story, 12. 
 
 This Element in Real Life, 12. 
 " " " Novels, 13. 
 
 Less Successful than her Characterization, 14. 
 
 Intentional Delineations of Hesitancy, 15. 
 
 Delineations of Hesitancy by Shakespeare, 16. 
 
 Action of Shakespeare's Dramas, 16. 
 
 Inspiration Derived from Real Events, 17. 
 
 Events of the Elizabethan Age, 18. 
 
 Their Effect on the Dramatists, 19. 
 
 George Eliot Less Fortunate, 19. 
 
 Action in Recent American Novels, 20. 
 
 Action of her Novels Simple and Natural, 20. 
 
 Exceptions to this, 21. 
 
vi Contents. 
 
 Her Depth and Richness of Thought, 23. 
 
 This Attractive to Earnest Minds, 24. 
 Her Humor, 25. 
 Extraneous Material Introduced, 25. 
 
 Futile Attempts to Subordinate it, 26. 
 
 Plots Demand Unity of Action, 28. 
 Failiires in this Respect, 28. 
 
 Style Injured from Same Cause, 31. 
 
 Knowledge of Artistic Requirements, 32. 
 
 Temperament not Artistic, 33. 
 
 A German Type of Mind, 33. 
 
 This Shown in the Novels, 34. 
 
 II. HER PERSONALITY AND OPINIONS AS LEND- 
 ING INTEREST TO HER NOVELS. 
 
 Shakespeare's Personality as Revealed in his Dramas, 37. 
 
 George Eliot's " " " " her Novels, 39. 
 
 This of Special Interest to Women, 41. 
 
 1st, Because of her Preeminent Position, 41. 
 
 2d, " " Portrayals of Woman's Life, 43^ 
 
 IH. HER NOVELS AS STUDIES OF WOMAN'S CHAR- 
 ACTER AND SURROUNDINGS. 
 The Later Novels Best Illustrate this, 53. 
 The Earlier Novels, 53. 
 Characters in the Later Novels, 54. 
 General Type of Heroine, 55. 
 
 New to Fiction, 57. 
 Heroines Well Individualized, 58. 
 
 Examples, 58. 
 Their Foils, 62. 
 
 Examples, 63. 
 Young Men, 64. 
 
 As Supplying the Evil Influences, 65. 
 Examples, 66. 
 
Contents. vii 
 
 Older Men, 69. 
 
 Older Women, 69. 
 
 All these Companions of the Heroine, 70. 
 
 IV. PURPOSES OF HER PLOTS : THE LESSONS THEY 
 WOULD TEACH. 
 
 Purpose of the Ordinary Novel, 73. 
 Her Treatment of Marriage, 75. 
 
 Love, 76. 
 
 Ideals and Aims of her Heroines, 77. 
 Framed for Success, 78. 
 But all Fail, 79. 
 Instances, 80. 
 Purpose in this, 81. 
 Failures of the Young Men, 82. 
 Causes Assigned for Failures of the Heroines, 83. 
 Their Marriages, 83. 
 Instances, 83. 
 The Charm of the Recital, 93. 
 
 V. IS REAL LIFE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE FAIL- 
 URES SHE PORTRAYS? 
 
 Successes Found in Real Life, 99. 
 
 " " " Women's Education, 100. 
 
 " " " Philanthropic Work, loi. 
 
 " " " Marriage, loi. 
 
 She Prefers to Depict Failure, loi. 
 The Reader's Preference for a Happy Ending, I02. 
 The Ending, if Sad, must be Heroic, 103. 
 The Failures of her Heroines a Gradual Collapse, 104. 
 A Descent of the Gods to Earth, 106. 
 
viii Contents. 
 
 VI. CAUSES OF THE DESPONDENT TONE OF HER 
 NOVELS. 
 
 1. Her Temperament, 112. 
 
 2. Ill-health and a Passive Existence, 113. 
 
 These Gave a False View of Life, 1 13. 
 
 3. The World's Condemnation of her Union, 114. 
 
 Opportunity for Self-vindication, 116. 
 Portrayal of Worldly Marriages, 117. 
 Autobiographical Character of "The Mill on the Floss," 1 19. 
 
 4. Her Peculiar Creed, as Stated by Herself, 120. 
 
 In Other Words, 120. 
 Its General Denials, 121. 
 Our Present Life, 122. 
 
 A Sad Product, 123. 
 Right and Duty, as Defined by Her, 125. 
 
 These Determined, not by Conscience, 125. 
 Or by Moral Principles, 125. 
 But by Results, 126. 
 A Slow Method, 128. 
 And One Ever to be Repeated, 128. 
 No General Principles, 129. 
 A Situation in "Jane Eyre," 130. 
 
 Her Written Comment on this, 133. 
 Comment Furnished by her Life, 134. 
 Early Adoption of her Belief, 136. 
 
 VIL THE STANDARD OF ETHICS REVEALED IN 
 HER NOVELS. 
 
 Enforcement of Sound Moral Principles, 139. 
 
 These not an Outcome of her Belief, 141. 
 
 Their Importance Repeatedly Emphasized, 141. 
 General Belief Less Clearly Expressed, 142. 
 
 Where Revealed, 145. 
 
Contents. ix 
 
 Manifest Interest in the Solution of Moral Problems, 146. 
 
 Goethe and Shakespeare, 146. 
 A Broader Purpose in All her Books, 148. 
 
 VIII. HER RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 Seeming Influence of Such a Creed upon Personal Effort, 153. 
 Her Concern for the Welfare of Mankind, 153. 
 
 Inspired by Compassion, 154. 
 
 Desire to Make Mankind Happier, 155. 
 " " " Wiser, 155. 
 
 Interest in the Higher Education of Women, 157. 
 Only Possible Continuance of Personal Effort, 158. 
 Few Minds could be thus Influenced, 159. 
 This Creed Robs the Soul of its Noblest Attributes, 160. 
 It Lessens the Value of Human Life, 160. 
 A Lack of Faith her Misfortune, 163. 
 Another Religion of Humanity, 164. 
 
 Its Motives: Love of the Creator as well as of the Race, 165. 
 Belief in a Future Existence, 165. 
 
 Temporary Character of Pain and Sorrow, 166. 
 
 Evidence of Design in Nature, 167. 
 
 Delight in Life, 167. 
 
 This Belief as a Sustaining Force, i68. 
 
 IX. THE NOVELIST OF THE FUTURE. 
 
 Future Recognition of George Eliot's Greatness, 173. 
 
 " " " " " Limitations, 174. 
 
 Qualities which a Greater Novelist will Possess, 175. 
 Hope, and not Despair, the Teaching of her Pages, 176. 
 
I. 
 GEORGE ELIOT AS A LITERARY ARTIST. 
 
I. 
 
 The five years which have elapsed since 
 the death of George EHot have sufficed to 
 acquaint the public with the leading facts of 
 her quiet, uneventful career, and to set forth, 
 to some extent, the nature of those peculiar 
 views which she held touching questions of 
 ethics and philosophy, and the manner in 
 which she applied these to the conduct of 
 life. 
 
 This knowledge has been furnished in 
 brief memoirs, written at different times by 
 her intimate friends, and in such of her let- 
 ters and journals as have been published 
 by her husband, Mr. Cross. All these will 
 hereafter serve as materials for that com- 
 plete biography which must in time appear, 
 and to which much that is now withheld 
 
4 George Eliot as a Literary Artist, 
 
 will doubtless contribute the personal data 
 still needed for a full understanding of her 
 mind and works. 
 
 That these works will retain their interest 
 for the readers of a later day there can b'e 
 no reasonable doubt. Considered merely 
 as stories, and as photographic representa- 
 tions of certain aspects of English social 
 life, their singular and abundant charm 
 must insure for them an immortality of re- 
 membrance, like that accorded to the writ- 
 ings of Fanny Burney, Jane Austen, and 
 Charlotte Bronte. More than this: the 
 name of George Eliot promises to hold, 
 among the female novelists of England, that 
 preeminent place which in France has long 
 been conceded to that of George Sand. 
 
 Whatever rich gifts the future may have 
 in store for its readers, it is doubtful if ever 
 again upon the novelist's page will be found 
 such nice observation of character and life, 
 such searching analysis of motive, such rich- 
 ness of humor, such universality of learning 
 
George Eliot as a Literary Artist. 5 
 
 and depth of thought. These rare quahties 
 have won from her contemporaries the im- 
 mediate and earnest attention of not mere- 
 ly the ordinary novel -reader, but of phi- 
 losophers, scientists, and observant men of 
 affairs ; and such recognition, we must be- 
 lieve, they will continue to command. 
 
 Let us look a little more closely at the 
 qualities which make her great, and note, as 
 we proceed, the manifest limitations of her 
 power. For limitations we must admit, if 
 we would not deal with her more tenderly 
 than we do with Homer and Dante and 
 Shakespeare, and other eminent minds, be- 
 fore whose supreme genius she would her- 
 self most reverently bow. 
 
 First among the rare excellences which 
 distinguish her work, as all critics will agree, 
 stands her power of characterization. Not 
 only does she bring before us personages 
 who have the essential stamp of reality and 
 substance, but she endows them with that 
 composite, many-sided nature which belongs 
 
6 George Eliot as a Literary Artist. 
 
 to the human beings around us, and which 
 mark the people of Shakespeare's world. 
 
 No portraiture of mere form and feature, 
 no trick of manner or speech, no single 
 mental or moral quality, sufifices for the 
 make-up of her men and women. Their 
 natures are revealed as presenting that tan- 
 gled web of good and ill, of strength and 
 weakness, which forms the moral and intel- 
 lectual structure of every individual of our 
 race. 
 
 With an analytic skill which few novelists 
 can approach, and none can wholly equal, 
 she reproduces for us, also, the inner life of 
 her characters ; we see the workings of 
 thought and conscience, detect the hopes 
 that impel, the fear that restrains ; and thus 
 become spectators of two related contests. 
 Beyond the visible drama in which her he- 
 roes play their part before men, we witness 
 the warfare within the soul, of which out- 
 ward acts are but the results : as above the 
 charging hosts of Greek and Roman battle- 
 
George Eliot as a Literary Artist. 7 
 
 fields, classic poets outline for us the forms 
 of gods and goddesses watching and con- 
 trolling the conflict below. 
 
 And not only do her personages receive 
 this thorough and effective portrayal at the 
 start, but they grow and develop as the story 
 proceeds. We behold them at the end of 
 the book other than they were at the be- 
 ginning. In most cases they have become 
 hardened, debased, corrupt. This change 
 for the worse has clearly been wrought by 
 the events that precede. Literature holds 
 no more striking instance of such develop- 
 ment than the now famous character of 
 Tito, whose gradual downfall, as delineated 
 in the novel of " Romola," is worthy a place 
 beside Shakespeare's picture of the debase- 
 ment of Macbeth. Tito's character has 
 been happily described as "fluid;" and he 
 is evidently meant to personate the typi- 
 cal Greek temperament, clear-sighted, light- 
 hearted, sensitive to beauty, fond of ease, 
 with no moral nature to shape or hinder its 
 
8 George Eliot as a Literary Artist. 
 
 careless enjoyment of the passing hour. In 
 fine contrast with such graceful mobility, 
 we find the sternly moral, unyielding tem- 
 perament of Romola, whose firm outlines 
 supply that striking contrast which George 
 EHot knew so well how to employ as a 
 means for heightening her effects. 
 
 Since she was wise enough to confine 
 herself to such phases of social life as had 
 come under her close and continuous gaze, 
 her range of characters is not great. But 
 within it she thoroughly understands, for 
 the most part, what she depicts. Her low 
 life is that of the ignorant, prejudiced, law- 
 abiding populations to be found in English 
 country towns. Of Dickens's city vaga- 
 bonds she knows nothing. The higher, re- 
 fined society of London's Belgravia came 
 before her at a subsequent period in her 
 own career ; and we see glimpses of it only 
 in her later works. But the picture, when 
 presented, is like the finest enamel, in its 
 firmness of contour, brilliancy of tint, and 
 
George Eliot as a Literary Artist. 9 
 
 exquisite polish. Such glimpses we find in 
 her last novel ; where the character of 
 Grandcourt, and, indeed, all that relates to 
 the fortunes of Gwendolen, show a precision 
 of touch, and a refined, delicate sympathy 
 of appreciation which she has never sur- 
 passed. 
 
 If we glance over the whole range of her 
 characters we shall conclude that her most 
 complete and elaborate successes are to be 
 found in delineations of intellectual young 
 women. Their natures and aspirations 
 were clear to her from her own experience ; 
 and in writing of them she writes of what 
 she best understands. But she is none the 
 less happy in her rapid portraitures of chil- 
 dren — of children too young to do anything 
 but toddle about and stare, and tell the truth 
 plumply. A few touches furnish the pict- 
 ure, but the result is surprisingly real. 
 
 Here she is the superior of Shakespeare 
 himself, whose mimic world contains but a 
 few children, and these, usually, the unhappy 
 
lo George Eliot as a Literary Artist. 
 
 scions of royal houses. He has endowed 
 them with a certain precocious sharpness of 
 wit; as if fear and suffering, by supplying a 
 stimulus to suspicious thought, had given 
 unnatural alertness and shrewdness to their 
 minds. It may be, however, that the require- 
 ments and resources of the acted drama fur- 
 nish sufficient explanation of this prevailing 
 type. 
 
 Whenever George Eliot fails to give in- 
 dividuality and substance to her characters, 
 it is to those for whose existence she most 
 cares. Her favorite heroes are the very 
 men who are not always attractive, or even 
 alive. Deronda, whom she petted, remains 
 to us a shadow ; and Mirah scarcely treads 
 the solid earth. The Jews who surround 
 them are little better than a cloud of wit- 
 nesses. But then we must admit that 
 throughout that portion of her writing 
 which deals with the Jewish problem her 
 genius well-nigh forsakes her. 
 
 Perhaps her most conspicuous failure 
 
George Eliot as a Literary Artist. 1 1 
 
 appears in the presentation of Savonarola. 
 With all her effort, he seems to shrink ner- 
 vously from our gaze, rather than to stand 
 forth sharply outlined against the shifting 
 turmoil of Florentine life, like a mighty 
 moral agent dominating the scene. It is 
 his bold, aggressive prime which she seeks 
 to depict ; yet a something weak and nega- 
 tive converts the grand, awe-inspiring de- 
 nouncer of his country's crimes and follies 
 into a petty, inconspicuous, intermeddling 
 monk. We stand expectant amid the mul- 
 titudes at his feet ; but he fails to sway us 
 with his impassioned tones. It is merely a 
 preoccupied, vanishing figure that confronts 
 Romola upon the highway, and bids her re- 
 turn to her desolated home; not the stern 
 personification of awakened conscience and 
 inexorable duty. The appeal of a com- 
 manding, earnest soul, the ring of an impe- 
 rious voice, the defiant challenge of a no- 
 bler, purer patriotism than her own — these 
 marks of the inspired prophet, and patriot 
 are not there. 
 
1 2 George Eliot as a Literary Artist. 
 
 Similar failures, it is true, occur in the 
 creations of other great writers of fiction. 
 Charlotte Bronte's hero, Rochester, ignoble 
 though he be, remains the most real and 
 masculine man to be found within the 
 printed pages of a book ; yet the same hand 
 which drew his stalwart proportions has 
 given us the limp and shadowy forms of 
 Louis and Robert Moore. No figures of 
 George Eliot's limning are so unsubstantial 
 as these ; and the number of her failures 
 are but few. Nearly all the varied charac- 
 ters which she has called into being have a 
 full and rounded personality, an individual 
 presence, a vital force, which show her to be 
 supreme in this one department of fictitious 
 writing. 
 
 The portrayal of character is, then, her 
 crowning excellence ; there her nice ob- 
 servation and philosophic insight render 
 her equal to her task. 
 
 Unfortunately for her, however, charac- 
 ters may not merely exist, they must move 
 
George Eliot as a Literary Artist. 1 3 
 
 and act. Given, in real life, certain people 
 grouped together, and the suitable events 
 and situations naturally follow. These will 
 at once proceed to evolve themselves from 
 the inevitable acting and reacting of such 
 personal influences upon each other. 
 
 But the novelist, in his imaginary world, 
 has to create, not only his personages, but 
 their careers ; he must supply, not only their 
 essential endowment of faculties, but every 
 separate act of their lives. The conduct 
 must flow naturally from the characters, 
 and copy the simple, easy course of real 
 events. Whatever savors of the strained 
 and melodramatic he is called upon to shun ; 
 neither can he sink to the tame and com- 
 monplace. Finally, the results of such acts 
 of the individual must be followed out, in 
 their widening circles, as they affect the 
 fortunes of all. 
 
 For the novelist's people are, at the best, 
 merely dummies ; set up, they will not ad- 
 vance ; he may congratulate himself, indeed. 
 
14 George Eliot as a Literary Artist. 
 
 if they can stand erect. When they glide 
 forward through the game of Hfe, it will 
 only be by the transmitted power of the 
 hand which shaped them, and which must 
 ever hover over the chessboard, if they are 
 to progress from square to square. 
 
 In this important element of action, 
 George Eliot fails of the highest attain- 
 ment. Such energies and ambitions as she 
 has given to her characters point to a series 
 of decisive deeds as the certain outcome of 
 their native gifts, to spirited careers, in which 
 they shall find full exercise for vigorous 
 powers. But these signal deeds, these brave 
 careers, she fails to supply. A band of 
 athletes wait in the arena, but no trumpet 
 summons them to a contest worthy of their 
 strength and skill. George Eliot's ability 
 was equal to the full equipment of her 
 heroes ; it fell a little short of the power 
 to provide them with adequate situations. 
 There is a lack of prompt, impelling force 
 in the hand which moves king and queen, 
 
George Eliot as a Literary Artist. 1 5 
 
 with all their attendant retinue, onward tow- 
 ards the inevitable checkmate at the close. 
 
 This seeming hesitancy in the mind of 
 an author is not, of course, to be confounded 
 with such hesitancy on the part of his hero, 
 whenever there is an intention to represent 
 the vacillating purposes of a bewildered 
 mind. Thus, in the play of " Hamlet," we 
 are shown that prince's hopeless indecision 
 when he finds himself beset by a conflict 
 of filial duties. The duty of avenging a 
 murdered father summons him to disgrace 
 and overwhelm an honored and beloved 
 mother. The more finely balanced and 
 sensitive his nature, the more uncertain 
 must be his course. But we never mistake 
 Hamlet's wavering purpose for that of the 
 author himself. Indeed, nowhere is the 
 poet's confident strength more apparent 
 than in his portrayal of the desperate hesi- 
 tancy of this noble mind, charged by heaven 
 with a mission from which the better half 
 of its nature appeals. 
 
1 6 George Eliot as a Literary Artist. 
 
 Delineations of perplexity and inaction 
 have a place in George Eliot's writing, as 
 in that of most authors ; and they demand 
 from her a skill no less positive and assured 
 than if the task she had set herself were to 
 carry a resolute soul straight onward to its 
 goal. For, that she may show her hero's 
 steps wandering from side to side, as his 
 will responds in turn to a throng of conflict- 
 ing aims, she must never lose sight of the 
 direct course which vigorous promptitude 
 would take. But whether the situations she 
 presents illustrate the swift advance of a de- 
 termined purpose, or the lagging dalliance 
 of a doubting or an inconstant mind, there 
 appears, in the imagination which framed 
 them, the same want of bold, aggressive 
 force. 
 
 In this matter of adequate action Shake- 
 speare is at his best. Throughout his plays 
 the characters move swiftly forward, amid 
 rapid, spirited scenes, and find sufficient test 
 of their mettle in the sturdy adventures 
 
George Eliot as a Literary Artist. 1 7 
 
 which his manly genius supplied. Here, as 
 in so many other respects, he remains the 
 unapproachable, " the only." 
 
 Since the imaginative power must largely 
 receive its quickening and scope from actual 
 events, the individual existence led by nov- 
 elist and poet, and, more than all, their near- 
 ness to grand epochs and to stirring periods 
 of national achievement, determine, to a 
 great degree, the quality of their heroes' 
 acts. When life without is fraught with 
 momentous issues, and real scenes shift con- 
 stantly with endless surprises, the simulated 
 life of the drama and the novel will not fail 
 to reflect the nerve and daring of the time. 
 To an audience that sits down in dinted 
 armor, with swords still belted to their sides, 
 the men of the stage and of the story must 
 show themselves neither sluggards nor cow- 
 ards. Where warriors are the spectators, 
 there will be plenty of hard fighting and 
 bold encounter on the boards. 
 
 The Elizabethan poets were fortunate in 
 2 
 
1 8 George Eliot as a Literary Artist. 
 
 their time, as the time was fortunate in its 
 poets. A period which had seen the pro- 
 longed and deadly shock of arms between 
 England and Spain, for religious freedom 
 and national independence, could not but 
 call its dramatists to similarly brave and 
 venturous careers ; and the hazardous ex- 
 ploits on land and sea, in which their audi- 
 ences had formerly shared, found many a 
 counterpart upon the stage. No man had 
 dwelt so remote from the struggle that he 
 had not regarded his own fortunes as at 
 stake in the dread issues of the contest. 
 They who now held the pen had trailed a 
 pike in their youth in the armies which fol- 
 lowed Sidney to a foreign land ; or, at home, 
 had felt their pulses quickened by the great 
 news borne in on every breeze. In the 
 surging tempest they had listened for echoes 
 from far-off guns that were driving a floun- 
 dering armada still deeper into whelming 
 seas ; and, later, had shouted with wild de- 
 light amid the jubilant throngs of London 
 streets. 
 
George Eliot as a Literary Artist. 1 9 
 
 The enthusiastic patriotism of the time, 
 which led on through gallant deeds to a 
 victorious and splendid peace, had set for- 
 ever astir the generous life -currents that 
 feed both heart and brain. This ardent, 
 intrepid manhood translated itself at last 
 into immortal pictures of bold and restless 
 enterprise, or of jovial, free-hearted ease. 
 The men of the stage, like the men of the 
 time, were not only alive, but they wrought 
 deeds worthy of living men. 
 
 To a writer of George Eliot's surround- 
 ings there could come no intense stimu- 
 lus and inspiration from without ; and nei- 
 ther nature nor experience rendered her 
 wholly independent of such aid. A passive, 
 brooding, reflective temperament, which 
 made her shrink from the myriad activities 
 that environed her, and led her to lean and 
 rely, where others, equally endowed, would 
 have advanced and led, has transmitted it- 
 self to the children of her brain. Upon the 
 theatre of the world, in the practical affairs 
 
20 George Eliot as a Literary Artist. 
 
 of daily life, they halt and meditate, instead 
 of stepping resolutely forward to accomplish 
 their tasks. 
 
 The same charge of inadequate action 
 is one lately brought against the Amer- 
 ican novel, as written to-day. It is claimed 
 that microscopic studies of domestic life 
 have usurped the place once rightfully held 
 by incident and adventure. How far the 
 general temper of the age, and how far the 
 individual temperament of the author, is re- 
 sponsible for this, cannot readily be deter- 
 mined. Possibly this tendency on the part 
 of recent novelists — if tendency it is — is the 
 farthest swing of the pendulum in its con- 
 tinued reaction against the romantic " storm 
 and stress " type of an earlier date. 
 
 But if the. action of George Eliot's novels 
 is not always vigorous, it is, at least, simple, 
 natural, and refined. Her lapses into the 
 hackneyed and the melodramatic are, in- 
 deed, so rare that we should believe her in- 
 capable of them, if we did not remember a 
 
George Eliot as a Literary Artist. 2 1 
 
 very few such scenes as Deronda's rescue 
 of Mirah from her intended suicide by 
 drowning in the Thames — which tragic, 
 well-worn situation introduces to him the 
 lady of his heart ; and the crashing peals of 
 thunder that accompany the love-declara- 
 tion of Ladislaw and Dorothea. 
 
 There is, however, a certain class of in- 
 stances in which it is impossible not to 
 question the naturalness and fitness of the 
 scenes she provides. These almcst show 
 the lack in herself of what might be called 
 an instinctive moral taste ; as in her labored 
 and sonorous poetry we miss that indefina- 
 ble something which marks the true poet. 
 It becomes evident that she has notions 
 about the proprieties of conduct which are 
 not shared by her readers. Her heroines 
 shock us occasionally, when they do not 
 shock her. Their most important acts 
 sometimes appear at variance with attri- 
 butes previously assigned them, and are 
 needlessly ignoble and weak. Such mis- 
 
2 2 George Eliot as a Literary Artist. 
 
 takes include Maggie's flight with Stephen 
 Guest — a false and impotent outcome of 
 the ardent self-denial and exalted aspira- 
 tions of Maggie's youth, and a weak point 
 upon which to turn the determining issues 
 of her promising life. Hardly more satisfac- 
 tory are Deronda's acquiescence in a secret 
 correspondence with Gwendolen, as the best 
 means of strengthening her good resolves ; 
 and Adam's marriage to Dinah, with their 
 subsequent prosaic careers. These are mis- 
 takes against which all her readers protest. 
 But, on the other hand, how delicate and 
 true are the timid confidences and noble 
 reserves which mark the conversation be- 
 tween Ladislaw and Dorothea, when the 
 arbitrary ban that has been laid upon their 
 love forbids them the frank sincerities of 
 speech! The half -concealed sympathies 
 and hesitating trust of these interviews lend 
 an emphasis to the final desperate avowal, 
 which calls for no factitious aid from a peal- 
 ing storm without. Nature's own sweet si- 
 
George Eliot as a Literary Artist. 23 
 
 lences should have been trusted to furnish 
 the most effective accompaniment to such 
 impressive words. 
 
 But George Eliot's novels have a broader 
 scope and a deeper meaning than any mere 
 recital of personal adventures can supply. 
 Blended more or less intimately with their 
 masterly delineation of character, and its 
 less striking manifestation in deeds, we find 
 a richness and profundity of speculative 
 thought which we are not accustomed to 
 meet save in books of a far more serious 
 tone. We gain from her pages, not only a 
 transcript of the life that surrounded her, 
 but the fruits of ripe scholarship, and the 
 contemplative wisdom of a philosophic mind. 
 The ablest thinkers perceive that here is an 
 intellect which has gathered whatever of rec- 
 ord or reflection the past has preserved, has 
 deduced from this experience of mankind 
 the lessons it conveys, and has brought for 
 their acceptance the transmuted treasures 
 of its thought. They find themselves sum- 
 
24 George Eliot as a Literary Artist. 
 
 moned to contemplate, not merely a few in- 
 teresting careers, but an epitome of human 
 life. 
 
 For this novelist is not content simply to 
 beguile. The story she tells has its pro- 
 found interpretation, its subtle suggestion, 
 its wide reactions ; and these she must like- 
 wise expound. The weary, who will not 
 think, and the light-minded, who cannot, 
 soon steal away from her circle and escape 
 into the sunshine. They who remain draw 
 closer, to catch every accent from her lips, 
 and find themselves acquiring an enlight- 
 ened vision and an understanding heart. 
 She reveals to them the secret springs of 
 action, the inevitable outcomes of life. The 
 emotions may not respond, but thought is 
 stirred, deepened, enriched. Thus only the 
 earnest and the intellectual become her at- 
 tentive listeners, but to them she is a sibyl 
 indeed. 
 
 Her ample resources, her large and leis- 
 urely manner, inspire a confidence in her 
 
George Eliot as a Literary Artist. 25 
 
 powers which lends added pleasure to the 
 perusal of her work. And this sense of 
 trustful ease on the reader's part is greatly- 
 enhanced by the mellow, quiet humor in 
 which she excels. It is a humor born of 
 wisdom — of that extended vision which sees 
 beyond petty limitations, and ranges all 
 things in fit relation to each other. Its 
 genial flame plays along the edges of som- 
 bre cloud, and is the sole suggestion of joy 
 which her writing contains. 
 
 It must be admitted, however, that the 
 amount of extraneous material introduced 
 into her books increases unduly in the later 
 novels ; as if admiring comments of the 
 critics upon the range of her scholarship 
 and the comprehensive grasp of her mind 
 had tempted her at length to a display of 
 intellectual wealth. Her stories were then 
 made to illustrate, not only the development 
 of certain lives, but special branches of 
 learning or thought. Thus, in " Felix Holt" 
 we find politics as a secondary theme; in 
 
26 George Eliot as a Literary Artist. 
 
 " Romola " it is the Renaissance in Florence, 
 during the closing years of the fifteenth cen- 
 tury ; in " Middlemarch " it is medicine ; in 
 " Daniel Deronda " it is the Jews. 
 
 An effort has evidently been made tow- 
 ards preserving needed perspective, and 
 something like unity of design, by setting 
 this abstract element — whether historical, 
 social, or philosophical — as a background 
 to the human drama unfolding before it; 
 in much the same fashion as a portrait- 
 painter outlines his full-length figure against 
 a shadowy forest or a tapestried wall. 
 
 The plan might have succeeded, had she 
 relied solely upon that abundant knowledge 
 which had been for so long an inmate of 
 her mind that, from an acquisition, it had 
 passed into a possession, and become that 
 fine aroma, that essence of learning, which 
 we call culture, and which is the topmost 
 waving flower of the earth -set, aspiring 
 plant. This would have pervaded the en- 
 tire structure of her work, without any- 
 
George Eliot as a Literary Artist. 27 
 
 where obtruding itself upon the gaze; and 
 thus the bold relief of her figures could have 
 been preserved. 
 
 But added to these stores was a wealth 
 of new material, hastily acquired, which 
 could receive little more than d^iscipline 
 and condensation, even at her competent 
 hands. Absorption and assimilation are 
 processes which time alone can effect. Ac- 
 cordingly, what should appear but as a dim- 
 ly-lighted vista, full of suggestive charm, be- 
 comes a bewildering distraction, when it ad- 
 vances to the front. 
 
 Her sentences are always so freighted 
 with meaning, and there is such attraction 
 to a reflective mind in the smallest details 
 she presents, that it seems almost ungra- 
 cious in her readers to enter a protest 
 against the amount of foreign material in- 
 troduced into her books. But it is unde- 
 niably true that what her novels gain there- 
 by in intellectuality they lose in directness 
 and force. 
 
28 George Eliot as a Literary Artist. 
 
 This is especially true of her plots. Of 
 the three classic unities, one alone receives 
 recognition from authors of the modern 
 school ; but that remains as absolutely es- 
 sential to the perfection of the novel as it 
 was to the tragedy of the Greeks. It en- 
 joins that every work of fiction, like every 
 drama, shall lead up towards one important 
 event ; and that all previous action shall 
 exist fpr the sake of its development. What- 
 ever character or situation fails to advance 
 the progress of the tale must weaken the 
 structure and lessen the effect. 
 
 George Eliot held to this paramount law 
 in a few of her works. " Adam Bede " re- 
 spects it in the main ; and " Silas Marner," 
 with its few and simple characters and pro- 
 gressive story, is a perfect illustration of the 
 rule. Even in " Romola," despite a broad 
 canvas and plentiful incidents, we find no 
 superfluous chapter. 
 
 But the rest of her books set this law ut- 
 terly at naught. The closing events of the 
 
George Eliot as a Literary Artist. 29 
 
 " Mill on the Floss " seem to be separated, 
 as by a wide chasm, from all that has gone 
 before. Nothing that precedes appears even 
 to have had them in view. They come to 
 terminate roughly, not to complete, the sto- 
 ry of Maggie's life. The author's interest 
 in the characters of this book, as portrait- 
 ures of real people, apparently led her to 
 forget that they, no less than ideal crea- 
 tions, must be held amenable to the require- 
 ments of art. 
 
 The later novels, masterly as they are in 
 the delineation of complex characters, ex- 
 hibit another kind of looseness of structure, 
 which almost suggests feebleness of will- 
 power. She has evidently sought to inter- 
 weave closely the separate destinies of her 
 various people, but has succeeded in con- 
 necting them only at a few salient points. 
 " Middlemarch," especially, has several char- 
 acters whose careers show so little essential 
 dependence upon each -other that they might 
 well group themselves into two distinct sets 
 
30 George Eliot as a Literary Artist. 
 
 for two distinct novels. Had the fortunes 
 of Mary Garth and Fred Vincy, with the 
 Featherstones and Farebrothers, formed a 
 tale by themselves, the record of Dorothea's 
 life would have gained greatly in clearness 
 and force. Again ; the Jews of " Daniel 
 Deronda" and the people of Gwendolen's 
 world are divided by so sharp a line that 
 solicitous attempts to blend their fortunes 
 have proved abortive. The book is cut in 
 two from beginning to end ; and — to bor- 
 row a simile — in turning from one part to 
 the other we fancy ourselves gazing at those 
 double leaves of a diptych on which old Ital- 
 ian masters liked to depict two scenes, whose 
 only connection might be that of the hinges 
 between them. 
 
 Unity of action, producing singleness of 
 impression on the reader's mind, can only 
 result from singleness of aim on the part of 
 the author. George Eliot has too many 
 aims in her books ; she seeks to accomplish 
 too much. 
 
George Eliot as a Literary Artist. 31 
 
 Her style suffers as do her plots. What 
 should be brief and strong becomes, in the 
 later books, copious, involved, and feeble. 
 In " Scenes of Clerical Life," note how crisp 
 and lucid are her statements ; in " Middle- 
 march," how full, elaborate, and unimpas- 
 sioned. The sentences are freighted with 
 more meaning than they can carry; while 
 an intellectual conscientiousness strives to 
 give expression to every delicate shade of 
 thought. Thus she adds, qualifies, balan- 
 ces, till power is spent before the period is 
 reached. In so doing she ignores the fact 
 that allegiance is due to art as well as to 
 truth ; that, for a productive mind, selec- 
 tion is as necessary as pruning to the vine. 
 A little more hurry and impetuosity, such 
 as come of healthful, confident strength, 
 would have swept away this over-elabora- 
 tion with a few vigorous, incisive phrases. 
 In them the gist of the thought would have 
 been preserved, and far more impressively 
 conveyed. To attempt to bring before our 
 
32 George Eliot as a Literary Artist. 
 
 vision all the sinuous reaches of thought 
 is to forget that imagination, rightly struck, 
 sees more than lenses show. 
 
 These weaknesses in the underlying 
 structure of her novels were such as George 
 Eliot knew well how to avoid. Her pro- 
 found respect for the recognized rules of art 
 should have availed to save her from herself. 
 Had she been always capable of the most 
 resolute following of an ideal, she would 
 have striven to indicate, rather than to de- 
 pict, the teeming background of her thought. 
 It would have been suffered to attain no 
 form more definite than vague outline and 
 pervading shadow; while she wrought to 
 perfect finish those commanding figures 
 that were to stand forth in shining promi- 
 nence as the central theme. More than 
 this; she would have weeded from the de- 
 velopment of her plots every needless de- 
 tail, and have terminated her full-freighted 
 sentences before they were borne down by 
 illustrations and qualifying clauses. 
 
George Eliot as a Literary Artist. 33 
 
 But, unfortunately, art was not her forte. 
 Nature had not vouchsafed to hei*that tem- 
 perament of the Greeks and of the modern 
 Latin races which possesses a keen discern- 
 ment of Hmits, abhors the superfluous, and 
 prefers sufficiency to excess. With this as 
 her dower, she would have given us fewer 
 characters and more symmetrical plots, and 
 thus have added to the few finished master- 
 pieces of the world ; but she would then 
 have amused and delighted where now she 
 elevates and instructs. To arouse the feel- 
 ings and to satisfy the taste is to hold a 
 temporary, if triumphant, sway : he who 
 stimulates the thought sets in motion in- 
 calculable forces which may never cease 
 their elevating and inspiring work. 
 
 Hers was preeminently the German type 
 of mind — omnivorous, thorough, reflective ; 
 a mind whose mission is to gather and sift, 
 rather than to shape and combine. It in- 
 terprets, but does not produce ; collects, 
 rather than creates. Such a mind finds its 
 
 3 
 
34 George Eliot as a Literary Artist. 
 
 natural expression in philosophical writing. 
 But, in the full maturity of her powers, she 
 abandoned metaphysics for simple human 
 portraiture; just as British artists pass in 
 time from the landscapes and idealities of 
 their youth to a faithful copying of actual 
 faces; and for the same reason. For gen- 
 eral statements she substituted individual 
 illustrations ; from the abstract she turned 
 to the concrete. 
 
 But she was not able to reconstruct 
 her mind, or to pervert its native bent. In 
 seeking to give what was demanded, she 
 could not refrain from giving a deal of what 
 was not. Thus the certainties of nature 
 and the mysteries of the soul seem never 
 absent from her thought. She remains the 
 scientist and the seer, even while wielding 
 the light wand of the improvisatrice ; and, 
 half hidden beside her, as she chants her 
 tale of love and sorrow, we discern the aban- 
 doned crucible and the tripod overturned. 
 
II. 
 
 HER PERSONALITY AND OPINIONS AS 
 LENDING INTEREST TO HER NOVELS. 
 
II. 
 
 Such are the chief literary excellences, 
 and such the defects, which a critical 
 study of George Eliot's novels must re- 
 veal. 
 
 Looked at, however, not merely as works 
 of art, but as expressions of her own person- 
 ality and of her own peculiar views, they 
 have for us something of that autobiograph- 
 ical interest which the sonnets, and even 
 the dramas, of Shakespeare have for his ad- 
 mirers to-day. To them the author has be- 
 come more interesting than anything he 
 wrote ; and our century, in scanning his im- 
 mortal lines, seems solicitous to discover, 
 not the secret of their matchless power and 
 charm, but any chance revelations they may 
 contain of the man himself — his character, 
 
38 Her Novels as Expressions of Opinion. 
 
 his temperament, and even the external 
 surroundings and circumstances of his 
 life. 
 
 What has thus far been learned of that 
 personality, which he seems so modestly 
 and so studiously to have concealed, has led 
 the world to acknowledge, not merely his 
 astonishing intellectual gifts, but his sweet 
 and wholesome moral nature, his profound 
 and delicate feeling, his noble ardor of pat- 
 riotism, his fellowship with whatever is hu- 
 man, his sincere reverence for whatever is 
 divine, his strong attachment to kindred, 
 his lasting love of home. Altogether a rare 
 combination — that of a commanding intel- 
 lect, with an easy mastery of all the thoughts 
 and feelings of his race ; a brave and sunny 
 and generous temperament, springing from 
 a warm and tender heart ; a character found- 
 ed upon manly regard for justice and right; 
 and, joined to these, the executive ability 
 of a shrewd and enterprising man of busi- 
 ness, always industrious and exact. 
 
Her Novels as Expressions of Opinion. 39 
 
 This Shakespeare, whom his townsmen 
 knew, has become to us as real a figure as 
 Shakespeare, the leading dramatist of the 
 world ; and we can now say of him, as did 
 his friend Ben Jonson, who had received 
 from him such substantial aid, " I love the 
 man, and do honor to his memory, on this 
 side idolatry, as much as any." 
 
 The attraction which George Eliot's 
 writings borrow from the personality of 
 their author is, however, of a somewhat dif- 
 ferent kind. That her character possessed 
 many fine and noble attributes has been 
 clearly shown by her letters and by the tes- 
 timony of her friends ; but her warmest ad- 
 mirers would not claim for her the posses- 
 sion of those hearty, brave, and genial qual- 
 ities which, when shown, never fail to secure 
 for an author the affectionate regard of his 
 readers, and to lend a personal interest to 
 every page he writes. 
 
 Not for what George Eliot was, but for 
 what she believed, do we seek to find her in 
 
40 Her Novels as Expressions of Opinion. 
 
 her works. We have learned that she cher- 
 ished a distinctive theory of Hfe, founded 
 upon principles which are sharply at vari- 
 ance with those almost universally held ; 
 and that by these principles she naturally 
 regulated not only her own conduct, but 
 that of the people of her books. Although 
 the characters and events portrayed may 
 belong to our familiar world, her interpreta- 
 tion of them cannot fail to reflect whatever 
 was peculiar in her individual standard of 
 right and wrong. For she was too logi- 
 cal and consistent in her mental processes, 
 too earnest in her convictions, too sincere in 
 their expression, not to teach, whether con- 
 sciously or not, the fundamental social creed 
 in which she so thoroughly believed. 
 
 The mimic world she has created appears 
 to us, then, as the embodiment of certain 
 singular opinions. Students of philosophy 
 find in her pages the principles of a small 
 but influential school of German and Eng- 
 lish theorists, put for the first time, as it 
 
Her Novels as Expressions of Opinion. 41 
 
 were, into action, and tested by a fancied 
 application to the conduct of life. Thus 
 they discern therein a wholly novel sys- 
 tem of social ethics, made to serve as 
 the underlying structure of nearly all her 
 works. 
 
 Nor is this the only interest that her 
 writings borrow from the personality of 
 their author. In the estimation of women, 
 George Eliot cannot fail to occupy an ex- 
 ceptional place. This arises, chiefly, from 
 the fact that the position she has attained 
 in English literature is the very highest yet 
 reached by her sex. The long list of Brit- 
 ish authors presents the name of no other 
 woman who holds in any department the 
 first rank. 
 
 This may be admitted without concession 
 to those who would maintain the natural in- 
 feriority of the female mind. For if it be 
 true, as a careful writer* has said, that of 
 
 * John Nichol, in " Life of Byron,!' in " English Men 
 of Letters " series. 
 
42 Her Novels as Expressions of Opinion. 
 
 eminent English authors three fourths have 
 been college-bred men, the denial to woman, 
 until very recent years, of that thorough 
 education which has proved so essential to 
 the development of masculine genius would 
 sufficiently explain why her supreme excel- 
 lence in literary work has been limited to 
 imaginative creations based upon a nice ob- 
 servation of social life. Even poetry de- 
 mands a technical knowledge of metrical 
 structure which only advanced classical in- 
 struction now confers. And in science, phi- 
 losophy, and broad historical investigation, 
 some previous rigid discipline of the men- 
 tal faculties is an indispensable condition of 
 marked success. When, by abundant schol- 
 arships, college doors shall be opened to the 
 poor girl as well as to the rich, so that the 
 best minds among women may possibly re- 
 ceive a systematic and liberal training, there 
 will doubtless be found, in the mass of wom- 
 an's intellectual work, a few such signal 
 achievements as the great number of edu- 
 
Her Novels as Expressions of Opinion. 43 
 
 cated men now supply. And even to that 
 small proportion among eminent writers 
 who derived no aid from the highest schools 
 there were vouchsafed an opportunity and 
 stimulus that could never, in earlier cen- 
 turies than our own, belong to woman's 
 life. 
 
 The superior position attained by George 
 Eliot was not gained, however, solely by the 
 exercise of a creative imagination, aided by 
 close studies of the social world. Had it 
 been so, she would have rendered less ser- 
 vice to her sex ; for then her success would 
 have been explained as resulting from the 
 extraordinary perfection of qualities that 
 are inherent in the mental build of women. 
 But, joined with these requisites, were the 
 logical habits of mind, the comprehensive 
 grasp of thought, the calm, dispassionate 
 tone, which have hitherto been considered 
 as prerogatives of the best masculine intel- 
 lects. Even the writings of Madame de 
 Stael had not sufficed to show that such a 
 
44 Her Novels as Expressions of Opinion. 
 
 combination of qualities could find a place 
 in a woman's brain. George Eliot's exist- 
 ence is itself a proof which saves the world 
 all future argument on this theme. 
 
 It is true that she seems to have won 
 from nature her rare mental equipment by 
 the surrender of that spiritual insight, that 
 reverent faith, that trustful hope, which have 
 been held to be the special dower of her sex, 
 but which survive in the greatest masculine 
 minds, even after they have accepted the 
 last discoveries of science, and have ques- 
 tioned fiith with every daring speculative 
 doubt. Such limitation on the part of 
 George Eliot only proves that her intellect 
 was not of the very highest and rarest — that 
 she was not a Shakespeare, a Dante, or a 
 Newton. What she was, however, was pre- 
 cisely that which cavillers denied woman 
 could be ; and she has silenced forever 
 their questioning voices. In her intrenched 
 position she holds the outpost for us against 
 all future attacks. 
 
Her Novels as Expressions of Opinion. 45 
 
 But we have in her a deeper interest than 
 this pride in the rare quahty of her work 
 and of her mind. Her writings possess for 
 us a special value from their presentation of 
 woman's character, circumstances, and ca- 
 reer. These she had studied profoundly, 
 as she saw them displayed in the society 
 around her; and to an understanding of 
 the problems they present she brought, not 
 only her own woman's nature, and her early 
 experiences of life, but the keenest powers 
 of intellectual insight, and a sympathetic ap- 
 preciation of whatever capacities 'and sur- 
 roundings differed from her own. 
 
 Thus she becomes the interpreter of 
 woman's lot as we see it to-day, under the 
 new and complex conditions which the nine- 
 teenth century has evolved. Victor Hugo 
 has called this the " woman's century ;" and 
 looking back over its long decades, from our 
 standpoint near the close, we see that it com- 
 prises all the really liberal and systematic 
 work that has ever been done towards the 
 
46 Her Novels as Expressions of Opinion. 
 
 full training and exercise of woman's men- 
 tal powers. When it shall end, no one can 
 doubt that her full liberation as an intellec- 
 tual being will have been achieved. 
 
 George Eliot writes just before all the 
 needed readjustments of society to the new 
 order of things have been made. She has 
 witnessed the inevitable collision between 
 the old and the new; and has felt in her 
 own struggling life the hampering restric- 
 tions which the world has not yet fully 
 swept away. Her delineation of this con- 
 flict between the close environments of the 
 conventional world and that longing for lib- 
 erty which has been newly awakened in the 
 minds of its noblest women has for her sis- 
 ters a deep and vital significance. It pre- 
 sents to them a vivid picture of our transi- 
 tional age as it affects woman's lot. She 
 breathes their aspirations ; traces the inac- 
 cessible pathways which they fain would 
 tread ; and shows to what fatal waste of 
 power and life their present limitations tend. 
 
Her Novels as Expressions of Opinion. 47 
 
 The ancient fetters that she cannot break 
 she makes appear both contemptible and 
 unjust. For hers is a voice upHfted in be- 
 half of her sex, which no hearer can disre- 
 gard ; a strength exerted for their deliver- 
 ance which cornmands the respect of man- 
 kind. 
 
 The problem of woman's destiny and at- 
 tainment furnishes, indeed, the underlying 
 theme of nearly all her books. When other 
 authors have employed fiction to advance 
 humanitarian ends, they have sought in each 
 separate tale to reform the special abuse 
 which at the time seemed calling most loudly 
 for their aid. Thus Dickens, Charles Reade, 
 Mrs. Gaskell, and Victor Hugo have intrust- 
 ed its own independent mission to every 
 such work. The several novels of George 
 Eliot, however, are devoted to different 
 phases of the same general theme; and, 
 taken together, as varied illustrations of 
 woman's life, they may be regarded as form- 
 ing one consistent whole. 
 
48 Her Novels as Expressions of Opinion. 
 
 The views embodied in George Eliot's 
 novels had not hitherto been presented save 
 in direct didactic teaching. For this mode 
 of utterance, which can reach only a few 
 earnest thinkers, she has substituted one 
 that attracts the widest audience, while, at 
 the same time, it furnishes the most trans- 
 parent medium at an author's command for 
 reproducing the various aspects and rela- 
 tionships of life. 
 
 But although the pictorial method of fic- 
 tion enlists the attention of a host of read- 
 ers, the greater number of these are content 
 to skim the surface of the story, seeking 
 nothing beyond the passing entertainment 
 which its incidents supply. They may be 
 dimly conscious of some general trend of 
 thought and purpose which escapes their 
 gaze ; but they leave to thoughtful minds 
 the task of searching for that wealth of la- 
 tent meaning and that breadth and unity 
 of design which form the basis of George 
 Eliot's work. 
 
Her Novels as Expressions of Opinion. 49 
 
 And here let us pause, to consider more 
 closely, not only the nature of those opinions 
 which she is so solicitous to enforce, but the 
 means and methods she adopts in their 
 presentation, and the extent to which her 
 peculiar moral tenets mar the lessons she 
 would convey. 
 
 4 
 
III. 
 
 HER NOVELS AS STUDIES OF WOMAN'S 
 CHARACTER AND ENVIRONMENT. 
 
III. 
 
 In order to ascertain the views she cher- 
 ishes concerning woman's position, we shall 
 do well to turn to her later novels. Not 
 that the same opinions may not be found 
 in her earlier books ; but in them it is man- 
 ifest that she worked with less freedom and 
 less conscious moral aim. Her paramount 
 object then was to produce a fresh and read- 
 able story. Memories of her own experi- 
 ence, and of real characters and events, suf- 
 ficiently disguised, furnished materials for 
 the tale. It was thus that her first novel, 
 " Adam Bede," came into being. The " Mill 
 on the Floss," though the second in time, 
 and the most autobiographical of her prose 
 works, presents the fullest and most elo- 
 quent delineation she has given of a girl's 
 
54 Shidies of Woman s Character. 
 
 unsatisfied thirst for the learning which has 
 been denied to her, while it has been freely- 
 proffered to her brother. As an impas- 
 sioned plea in behalf of her sex, it deserves 
 to be studied with her later works. " Silas 
 Marner " and " Felix Holt " were the next 
 in order of production ; and they grew, like 
 " Adam Bede," from the germ of some real 
 personage or incident associated with her 
 own life. These two are the only books 
 which keep the female characters subordi- 
 nate throughout; and, however admirable 
 in many respects, they are confessedly of 
 the least interest to a majority of her readers. 
 With " Romola," " Middlemarch," and 
 " Daniel Deronda " the case is different. 
 Direct models from memory were then ex- 
 hausted ; while a trial of her powers had 
 taught her their strength. The materials 
 needed she now supplied from her fertile 
 imagination, evolving such characters and 
 situations as would best illustrate her the- 
 ories of life. 
 
Studies of Woman s Character. 55 
 
 It is proof of the excellence of her meth- 
 od, and of her thorough comprehension of 
 both the springs and the manifestations of 
 character, that these creatures of her brain 
 step forth upon her pages as real and at- 
 tractive as if they had previously passed an 
 actual existence upon our solid earth. In- 
 deed, they surpass all others in the impres- 
 sion of vitality and naturalness which they 
 convey. 
 
 The women of these stories may reveal 
 less vehement aspirations than does the 
 Maggie Tulliver of an earlier date, but they 
 have a finer fibre in their mental and mor- 
 al being, a nobler restraint, born, perhaps, of 
 that discipline, both of intellect and heart, 
 which George Eliot herself had in the mean- 
 time undergone. In breadth of thought, in 
 alluring and ennobling suggestion, the later 
 works are greatly superior to the earlier 
 ones ; while the problems they seek to un- 
 fold are deeper and more complicated than 
 any that precede. 
 
56 Studies of Woman s Character. 
 
 These later books are mainly occupied 
 with the illustration of woman's character 
 and life. In all of them a heroine, and not 
 a hero, is the chief figure. The action and 
 interest centre around her, and other char- 
 acters exist merely as her aids or her foils. 
 That she is a young woman of strong per- 
 sonal attractions only shows that George 
 Eliot was forced in some things to follow 
 her predecessors. And yet in the novel of 
 " Jane Eyre," Charlotte Bronte had set her- 
 self the task of making a heroine interest- 
 ing, despite the lack of both beauty of per- 
 son and fascination of manner; and how 
 well she succeeded, the lasting popularity 
 of that matchless novel sufficiently attests. 
 But the day has not yet come — if, indeed, it 
 is to come — when a novelist of even Miss 
 Bronte's genius will dare to present an old 
 lady as the leading spirit of the story, though 
 she be as beautiful, in her serene and lovely 
 age, as was Madame Recamier herself, as 
 learned and accomplished as Mary Somer- 
 
Studies of Woman^s Character. 57 
 
 ville, and as charmingly seductive in manner 
 as Ninon de I'Enclos. 
 
 But the fair young woman of George El- 
 iot's stories is of a type new to fiction, and 
 such as belongs only to this century. Nat- 
 ure has endowed her, not merely with beauty, 
 but with the possibilities of a noble, helpful 
 womanhood. In all cases she possesses a 
 superior intellect, and cherishes aspirations 
 above and beyond those of the conventional 
 world in which her lot is cast. That world 
 has had the shaping of her career, and has 
 granted to her only the meagre education 
 which it has been wont to prescribe to her 
 sex. The later objects and ambitions which 
 it offers are such as society deems fitting for 
 her to pursue. 
 
 When we first meet her, her soul is filled 
 with generous ardor. She longs to be good, 
 and to do good to others ; to devote her 
 powers to the accomplishment of some great 
 purpose. The world about her, she thinks, 
 must, in the end, furnish an opportunity for 
 
58 Studies of Woman's Character. 
 
 realizing her ideal. She has not yet learned 
 that opposition, whether active or passive, 
 must beset her at every step. 
 
 Save in the possession of superior men- 
 tal endowments and loftier aims than belong 
 to their sisters, these heroines have little in 
 common. Each stands for a different type, 
 and has a marked individuality of her own. 
 
 Maggie, thirsting for J;he educ atiorr which 
 is wasted on her brother Tom, longs also, 
 with passionate ardor, for greater love and 
 sympathy than his colder heartcan give. 
 Her turbulent, impu lsive nature finds with - 
 iaJtselLjio^ower of _will^firm enough_ to di- 
 rect its course ^^a nd some ca lmejr.- strength 
 must supply the guidance of which she 
 stands.. in j ieed. JThus her mind craves in^ 
 struction, her heart love, her nature support . 
 All_these we find denied her by the circum- 
 stances of her lot. 
 
 Roml)Ia7wit'inTer self-poise, her firmness, 
 her reserve, is the very opposite of her pred- 
 ecessor. Her intellectual life has nothing 
 
Studies of Woman s Character. 59 
 
 of originality or aspiration. She seeks to 
 aid her father in his mental needs, rather 
 than to accomplish anything for herself 
 or the world at large. Moral integrity, sin- 
 gle-hearted devotion to filial duty, are what 
 she chiefly represents. This duty assumes 
 to her something of a sacred aspect from 
 the nature of the trust received from her 
 dying father. This is nothing less than the 
 transfer to his native city, for public uses, of 
 the rich and valuable library which it has 
 cost him a lifetime to collect. 
 
 There is something hard and cold in 
 Romola's temperament which robs her of 
 the most attractive charm. She withdraws 
 herself too much from our knowledge and 
 sympathy, as does her townsman Savonaro- 
 la, who personates a positive moral force in 
 public affairs, as she does in private life. 
 But, with her lofty dignity of demeanor and 
 her nobility of. purpose, she fittingly stands 
 as the central figure of that broad civic 
 conflict which is surging, around . her, in 
 
6o Studies of Woman s Character. 
 
 which the unprincipled powers of the Me- 
 dicis find themselves opposed by the relent- 
 less moral force of Savonarola and his ascetic 
 disciples. 
 
 Within this broader drama progresses 
 also the personal drama with which we are 
 chiefly concerned, where the conflict comes 
 between faithful allegiance to filial duty on 
 the part of Romola, and a flagrant disregard 
 of filial duty on the part of her husband. 
 
 In the Dorothea of " Middlemarch " we 
 have, perhaps, the finest, noblest female char- 
 acter to be found in all fiction. Thorough- 
 ly English in temperament, she is of a high- 
 er social rank than Maggie, and has re- 
 ceived, at home and abroad, a more extend- 
 ed and varied education. It is the typical 
 boarding-school education of her class ; and, 
 compared to her mental need, this girlish 
 instruction — to quote George Eliot's own 
 words — is only " comparable to the nibblings 
 and judgments of a discursive mouse." Its 
 shallowness and inadequacy only become 
 
Studies of Woman s Character. 6r 
 
 apparent, however, when she attempts to ap- 
 ply it to the conduct of her own Hfe. She 
 has a good mind and a warm heart; and 
 these, joined with a serene elevation . of 
 thought and the utmost delicacy of feeling, 
 render her personality wholly noble, sweet, 
 and gracious. 
 
 Her characteristics are those of the phil- 
 anthropic temperament; and a wish to un- 
 dertake some enlightened charitable work, 
 which shall be of permanent benefit to those 
 beneath her, is the chief desire of her heart. 
 Possessed of an ample fortune and abun- 
 dant leisure, with freedom from absorbing 
 family ties, an indulgent guardian and ad- 
 miring friends, she would seem to have every 
 requisite needed for accomplishing her gen- 
 erous purposes. 
 
 In the last novel, " Daniel Deronda," we 
 find a young woman differing from all these. 
 Her peculiar gifts are those of the artistic 
 temperament. With graceful beauty, and 
 quick, keen wit, vivacious, impressionable, 
 
62 Studies of Woman s Character. 
 
 and brave, Gwendolen might, if opportunities 
 favored, become a good and successful ac- 
 tress. But the prejudices of a gentlewom- 
 an, and a fondness for the elegant ease of 
 private life, lead her to prefer the triumphs 
 and successes of her social world. With 
 friends as proud and prejudiced as herself, 
 she could only under extraordinary circum- 
 stances look to the stage for a career. When 
 these circumstances do arise, and duty to 
 those dependent on her calls for every exer- 
 tion in her power, we find her seeking for 
 the first time to employ her native gifts. 
 Thus is our last heroine brought face to 
 face with the problems of her life. 
 
 To each of these later heroines George 
 Eliot has given a daily companion — usually 
 sister or cousin — who is plainly intended to 
 serve as a foil. These foils are all of the 
 ordinary, conventional type, with dull intel- 
 lects and selfish hearts ; but they remain 
 wholly unconscious of limitations in them- 
 selves. Discerning no good beyond worldly 
 
Studies of Woman s Character. 63 
 
 advancement, and no use for any faculties 
 save those of the practical, managing sort, 
 they are convinced of their own superior 
 efficiency and good sense. Always pretty 
 and attractive, with their rosy cheeks and 
 fresh ribbons, they represent the Philistine 
 in the bud. For narrow natures like theirs 
 the social world exists. 
 
 Thus Dorothea's attempts to employ her 
 fortune for the good of others meet with 
 constant protest from her practical sister 
 Celia; and, at a later stage, we see the 
 worldly standards of Rosamond placed in 
 marked opposition to her own. For Gwen- 
 dolen, there are Cousin Anna and all her 
 own relatives, to array false notions of fami- 
 ly pride against the effort she contemplates 
 for earning, by direct labor, the income that 
 she needs. 
 
 In the earlier stories this heightening ef- 
 fect of contrast is secured by giving the 
 directly opposite qualities to some more 
 prominent personage, who is otherwise es- 
 
64 Studies of Woman s Character. 
 
 sential to the tale. The weak vanity of 
 Hetty has its complement in Dinah's moral 
 strength. Maggie finds in her sedate cousin 
 Lucy, and her narrow-minded, resolute, sel- 
 fish brother Tom, a check to her ardent im- 
 pulses. Romola's fixity of purpose and 
 moral certitude are set off by Tessa's child- 
 ish weakness and bewilderment of mind. 
 Thus, like a true artist, George Eliot spares 
 no touch which may serve to throw her 
 leading figures into bolder relief. 
 
 Among the secondary figures of the later 
 novels the prominent place is held by the 
 young men, who are needed in every story, 
 to furnish the essential elements of the 
 plot. 
 
 Two heroes of earlier books, Adam Bede 
 and Felix Holt, are, to some extent, varied 
 portraitures of her father; and they are 
 made to represent her ideal of a self-respect- 
 ing, manly British workman, as proud of 
 his class, and of the nobility of his class, as 
 if he were a lord. 
 
Studies of Woman s Character. 65 
 
 With these exceptions, it may be said that 
 she nowhere presents to us a young man 
 fitted in every way to command our esteem. 
 That endowment of superior mental gifts, 
 brave ambition and resolute purpose, which 
 she vouchsafes to her young women, she has 
 denied to all their lovers. No one of them, 
 unless it be Lydgate, conveys the impres- 
 sion of strong, robust intellect, or, indeed, of 
 any positive, individual for^e. The other 
 young men of her novels' are all of slight 
 mental build, superficial and shallow. The 
 objects for which they strive, or, rather, for 
 which they hope — since they are little given 
 to anything like sustained effort — are selfish 
 and transitory. 
 
 What they chiefly lack is strength of will, 
 persistency of purpose. With no firm prin- 
 ciple, and preferring indolence to strenuous 
 action, they are more inclined to drift pleas- 
 antly down to destruction than to stem the 
 seductive tide. 
 
 It is always they who bring about the 
 5 
 
66 Studies of Woman! s Character. 
 
 anxiety and disaster of the story. Falling 
 themselves, they carry others down with 
 them, and wreck the family hopes. These 
 well-intentioned, pleasure-loving gentlemen, 
 just entering upon life, become the evil 
 geniuses of the tale ; not through any de- 
 pravity of nature, manifested in the various 
 ways which distinguish Shakespeare's vil- 
 lains ; not through ambition, like Macbeth, 
 nor a settled hate, like lago, nor stolid bru- 
 tality, like King John ; still less through a 
 rollicking delight in wickedness for its own 
 sake, like Richard the Third ; nor yet from 
 the mere wantonness of unbridled power, like 
 Richard the Second. They do not plan evil, 
 lying awake at night, and studying how to 
 circumvent their foes. It suffices that they 
 dislike stern and disagreeable things. 
 
 Of such young men nearly every novel 
 has one or two. In " Adam Bede " we find 
 Arthur Donnithorne ; in " The Mill on the 
 Floss," Stephen Guest ; in " Silas Marner," 
 the Cass brothers ; in " Romola," the im- 
 
Studies of Woman s Character. 67 
 
 mortal Tito ; in " Middlemarch," Fred Vincy 
 and Ladislaw — whom, however, circum- 
 stances chance to favor, so that no strong 
 temptation besets them. All these are of 
 one brotherhood, though each has an in- 
 dividualized character. 
 
 In Daniel Deronda our author evidently 
 intended to furnish a wholly admirable 
 young man, a perfect hero, without fear 
 and without reproach ; and it may be that 
 some of her readers accept him as such. 
 But without employing the vehement lan- 
 guage of Mr. Swinburne, who calls him a 
 " doll," and foretells that he will " go the 
 way of all waxwork," we may truly say 
 that for most of us he has really no exist- 
 ence, since his creator has not succeeded in 
 breathing into him the breath of life. Of 
 his lack of vitality and stamina, however, 
 George Eliot is not conscious ; neither does 
 she share her reader's antipathy to Stephen 
 Guest. But the weakness of the others is 
 evidently a part of her plan, and is sufifi' 
 
68 Studies of Woman s Character. 
 
 ciently accounted for by the circumstances 
 in which they are placed. 
 
 Thus the underlying purpose of the story 
 requires that Ladislaw be made inferior, in 
 every way, to Dorothea ; since there is to 
 be no happy ending to her life. Such 
 love as she bears him springs from her 
 large, self-accusing, generous nature, which 
 is concerned to atone, so far as possible, 
 for another's injustice. The expectation of 
 a fortune has spoiled Fred Vincy, by keep- 
 ing him for years dallying with his fate. 
 The Casses grew up in an undisciplined, 
 motherless home. Tito had found the sun- 
 shine of hfe too joyously radiant for him 
 to withdraw into the shadow at the behest 
 of duty; and Arthur Donnithorne, as the 
 young gentleman of the neighborhood, had 
 never supposed that his conduct could be 
 found other than admirable and upright. 
 
 The few young men who are not weak 
 are somewhat hard and domineering. They 
 lack expansiveness of mind and outflowing 
 
Studies of Womatis Character. 69 
 
 sympathy. Such are Tom, and Grandcourt, 
 and even Lydgate. 
 
 Whether it be that she faithfully copies 
 nature, in the interests of truth, or selects 
 from nature, in the interests of art, young 
 gentlemen might be pardoned if they en- 
 tered a protest against the part she makes 
 them play in her dramas of life. 
 
 And it can hardly be said that men of 
 riper years find more favor at her hands 
 than do their good-for-nothing sons. Those 
 of middle age are often noisy, plethoric, and 
 unreasonable ; while her old men are, with- 
 out exception, hard, dry, and exacting. They 
 are the crystallized forms of such younger 
 characters as Tom and Grandcourt. 
 
 The women of middle age whose por- 
 traits chiefly impress us are clever and keen, 
 inclined to shrewishness, like Mrs. Poyser 
 and Mrs. Cadwallader ; though the mothers 
 of a few self-regulated daughters, like Rosa- 
 mond and Gwendolen, are necessarily of the 
 opposite type. Old women she does not 
 sketch. 
 
70 Studies of Womajis Character. 
 
 These various characters supply the in- 
 fluences that are needed for evolving the 
 heroine's career. We meet her, thus ac- 
 companied, at the opening of the story, ad- 
 vancing to confront the problems of life. 
 Whatever difKculties lie before her, since 
 she has been rendered interesting to us, we 
 are naturally desirous that she be brought 
 at length to the success and happiness she 
 seeks. 
 
IV. 
 
 THE PURPOSES OF HER PLOTS: 
 THE LESSONS THEY WOULD TEACH. 
 
IV. 
 
 We come now to inquire what is the nat- 
 ure of the issues or problems upon which 
 depend the whole tenor and outcome of the 
 tale. 
 
 In the first place, let us state that, in the 
 development of her stories, George Eliot 
 sets for herself a far higher task than be- 
 longs to the average delineator of human 
 life. The latter is content if he finally se- 
 cures for his heroes the mere externals of 
 success ; if he achieves that superficial ter- 
 mination of an earthly career which regards 
 a good establishment in life as the supreme 
 consummation of earthly hopes. 
 
 The ordinary novel centres the interest 
 upon a pair of lovers, who are made attrac- 
 tive to us at the start, and against whose 
 
74 The Purposes of her Plots. 
 
 happiness — which means simply their mar- 
 riage — cruel guardians, previous obligations, 
 chance misunderstandings, or some other 
 ruthless fates, perpetually conspire. Con- 
 tinued interposition of such obstacles gives 
 the needed length to the story. On the 
 overcoming of these the interest hinges; 
 when once they are annihilated, the action 
 ends. Wedding -bells, orange - flowers, the 
 sudden generosity of rich and repentant 
 relatives, with other glories of the last chap- 
 ter, bring the history of these lives to a tri- 
 umphant close. A sentence or two at the 
 end may possibly give meagre hints as to 
 the course of their continued existence, and 
 the time and manner of their death ; but 
 such trifles are disposed of lightly, and seem 
 mentioned only as a good-natured conces- 
 sion to the idle curiosity of empty minds. 
 
 Now, George Eliot's novels have an un- 
 derlying purpose which far transcends, in 
 depth and seriousness, the attainment of ma- 
 terial good-fortune by a few fictitious people. 
 
The Purposes of her Plots. 75 
 
 Marriage is treated by her, it is true, as 
 the chief event in the heroine's career, since 
 it determines irrevocably the character of 
 daily influences and surroundings. She rec- 
 ognizes the fact that the enduring partner- 
 ship it forms not only binds together two 
 individual lives, but that the fixed home it 
 creates allies them to society at large, and, 
 by giving them broader responsibilities, wid- 
 ens their existence, and enlarges immeasur- 
 ably their horizon. Its close and perpetual 
 companionship either cramps or expands 
 the whole nature ; fetters it to unworthy 
 tasks, or lifts and gladdens its highest pow- 
 ers, and summons them to a full and con- 
 tinuous development. 
 
 As such George Eliot regards it. With 
 her it is a mighty factor in determining 
 one's destiny, an important means to a still 
 more important end. On it she hangs the 
 issues of intellectual and spiritual life. Thus 
 she generally places it in the early por- 
 tion of the story, almost in the opening 
 
76 The Purposes of her Plots. 
 
 pages. It becomes the prelude, and not the 
 close. 
 
 Wherever it is reserved for the con- 
 summation of the tale, as in the average 
 novel, an absorbing mutual love naturally 
 forms the theme of all that goes before. But 
 in her stories love occupies no such promi- 
 nent place. It is not left out ; few, indeed, 
 are the works of fiction that can do without 
 it ; but it plays merely a subordinate part. 
 
 She gives us many fine, ardent, sympa- 
 thetic young women — one, at least, to each 
 of her books ; but we see none of them in 
 love, that is, de^E grate l y in lov eHike the 
 heroines of Charlotte Bronte and George 
 Sand. Certainly, Maggi e is never in lo ve, 
 even wit.h_ Stephen Guest. _Jier fancy fo r 
 him is but the lo ve of love, and notof the 
 lover ; and her nature wascagable of some- 
 thing b^eyondT that. Dorothea makes no 
 preFences' lo "herself about Mr. Casaubon ; 
 and as for Ladislaw, under ordinary cir- 
 cumstances he could have been nothing 
 
The Purposes of her Plots. ']'] 
 
 more to her than a friend. Romola was 
 charmed by Tito, as he charmed all whom 
 he cared to influence ; but of a strong, self- 
 absorbing love her nature seemed hardly ca- 
 pable. Gwendolen's reverent admiration for 
 Deronda, and her implicit trust in his wis- 
 dom and guidance, show traits of the tender 
 passion ; but its other manifestations are 
 scantily portrayed. 
 
 Her heroines are led into marriage, but it 
 is after the world's ways, and mostly after 
 the world's advice. She has other aims 
 than to depict the struggles of the heart; 
 and the love she does indicate is intended 
 merely as an aid or hinderance to the ac- 
 complishment of intellectual and moral ends. 
 
 What she regards as the chief good of her 
 heroines is the realization of their loftiest 
 ideals. Were she to leave them with their 
 destinies fulfilled, she would succeed in ob- 
 taining for them, in the first place, a thor- 
 ough training of their mental and moral 
 faculties ; and, after that, every opportunity 
 
78 The Purposes of her Plots. 
 
 to apply them to the highest objects of 
 hfe. 
 
 If the objects these heroines seek con- 
 cern not merely their own good, but that of 
 their fellow-men, then society, she holds, has 
 a direct interest in the attainment of their 
 ideals. It is bound to promote them by 
 every means in its power. If, instead of this, 
 it employs its institutions, customs, and prej- 
 udices towards crushing them out, George 
 Eliot would arraign the whole structure of 
 civilized society, as tending to the waste of 
 its noblest energies, and to the cramping 
 and debasement of the individual soul. 
 
 But the failure of these heroines we do 
 not expect. Such creatures as they^ must 
 have been brought into being to show us 
 the possibilities of a brave young woman- 
 hood, and to serve as an inspiration to oth- 
 ers who, like them, would fain dedicate their 
 powers to something better than petty per- 
 sonal aims. Our author has given them 
 such rare endowments, she manifests such 
 
The Purposes of her Plots. 79 
 
 loving sympathy with their views, that it 
 must be she reserves for them a fortunate 
 and glorious lot. Whatever difficulties be- 
 set their path, they will surely, in the end, 
 obtain the education they covet, and meet 
 the helpful companion who shall aid them 
 in securing the good they seek. 
 
 Then, when the struggle is past, we may 
 •hope to behold them established in life as 
 happy, influential, benevolent women, pre- 
 siding over a home which not only shelters 
 and cheers themselves, but is a centre of 
 hospitality and philanthropic effort for so- 
 ciety around them — a veritable temple, from 
 which sweet and sustaining influences flow 
 out continually to bless and elevate the 
 world. 
 
 But what do we find .? This — that in all 
 cases her heroines fail utterly of attaining 
 what they seek. There is not one whose 
 aims and ambitions are not brought to 
 nought. We behold each eager young as- 
 pirant baffled after all her endeavors, and 
 
8o The Purposes of her Plots. 
 
 hopelessly despairing of realizing her ideals. 
 At length she abandons her dreams and her 
 intellectual life, succumbs to the conven- 
 tional world, and, having married her infe- 
 rior, ends her days, if not in gloom, in what 
 is little better — the resigned acceptance of 
 some petty good. 
 
 But, though her ideals are never realized, 
 they are never disowned. She has found 
 them unattainable, but they still burn above 
 her despairing gaze with the pure radiance 
 of the stars. If it is not possible for her to 
 succeed, neither is it possible for her to for- 
 get. 
 
 How sad is the issue of all these young 
 lives ! Maggie becomes an outcast from 
 home, is distrusted by her townspeople, and 
 disowned by the brother whom she passion- 
 ately loves. Only in the presence of a sud- 
 den and terrible death do the two become 
 areconciled at last. Romola is compelled to 
 abandon her father's sacred trust, loses re- 
 spect and love for her husband, and, after 
 
The Purposes of her Plots. 8 1 
 
 his shameful death, ends her forlorn days 
 among strangers, in noble self-immolation, 
 as a kind of Sister of Charity. Dorothea 
 contracts two unsuitable marriages, and, 
 by the last, sinks into commonplace obscur- 
 ity, with all her rare endowments unrecog- 
 nized and unused. The opportunity for that 
 enlightened philanthropic labor which she 
 was fitted to achieve, and for which she so 
 strenuously and pathetically sought, was 
 never found. Poor Gwendolen's lot is the 
 saddest of all, since she has not, like the 
 others, an untroubled conscience to sustain 
 her in the wreck of all her hopes. 
 
 By such careers George Eliot seems to 
 teach the disastrous ending of a woman's 
 life, if she has been endowed by nature with 
 talents and ambitions beyond those of the 
 mass of mankind. Given, she would say, 
 a superior young woman, with aspirations 
 for some better existence than her conven- 
 tional sisters lead, and she will find herself 
 so hampered by a deficient and desultory edu- 
 
 6 
 
82 The Purposes of her Plots. ' 
 
 cation, by inappreciative, narrow-minded rel- 
 atives, by the unsuitable marriage into which 
 she is led, through the potent prejudices of 
 those about her, that defeat and surrender 
 will become her inevitable lot. The ideal 
 ' towards which all her powers tend must fade 
 at length into a mocking vision. To bear her 
 bruises with patient resignation, shrinking 
 from the sight of those who once knew her, 
 is the only happiness she can attain. 
 
 One might intensify the gloom of the 
 picture by remarking that the lives of her 
 young men fail as universally as do those 
 of her young women. But such as she 
 paints for us deserve nothing less, and were 
 evidently foredoomed to disaster at the 
 start. In their case it is not the sad spec- 
 tacle of intellect, integrity, and sweet unself- 
 ishness antagonized and subdued by the 
 Philistine forces of stupidity, time-serving, 
 and dull content. 
 
 This ultimate failure of all those whom 
 she frames for success, and of whose success 
 
The Purposes of her Plots. 83 
 
 the world stands in need, is made to result 
 partly from deficient education, partly from 
 the opposition of well-meaning friends, but 
 inore than anything else from the unfortu- 
 nate marriage which society has either en- 
 couraged or allowed. For her heroines, 
 without exception, are presented to us as 
 mismlted at last ; their lives do not furnish 
 a singlx^ instance of a wholly suitable and 
 happy carriage. 
 
 Magglfe,^ alone does not marry, owing to 
 her early ac^ath ; but sh e is affianced to a 
 weak^^ripplejjuhom she does not Id yeT'and, 
 afteraaj:ds,Jan<^'is-4ieiseLLaij_iQve_withJhe 
 betrothed of ari other, whose good -looks and 
 graces cannot/save him from t he reade r's 
 contempt. Her union with either would 
 have proved al dir e misfortu ne. Romola's 
 marriage leads idirectly to the wreck of all 
 her hopes. Her fascinating husband, of 
 whom at the outset neither her father nor 
 herself could know much, soon shows him- 
 self worthless and base. He develops into 
 
8 4. The Purposes of her Plots. 
 
 a swindler, a thief, and conspirator; be- 
 comes unfaithful and treacherous to the last 
 degree ; and ends by despoiling his noble k 
 wife of fortune, happiness, and friend|g. 
 Dorothea's social world acknowledges #r|ie 
 unfitness of her first marriage, but doe^^ ^^^ 
 strenuously interfere, owing to the fac/ (- ^j^g^^ 
 the aged, unlovely pedant whom shZ-g ^^^^ 
 sents to wed is possessed of the rp^-quisite 
 competence, good-breeding, and fai/.^^^^y ^^^_ 
 nections. For herself, she is si/rjffej.g(j ^^ 
 cherish the belief that by aidinr';;. j^jj^^ j^^ j^j^ 
 historical studies and_^ authqjVship she can 
 find the fitting opportuni^.y she seeks for 
 helping- on some great bWeficent work. 
 George Eliot has written t nothing more 
 touching than the story of tthis union as it 
 affects Dorothea's ardent young life. The 
 poverty of her second husband, who rever- 
 ently adores her, and whom 'to some decree 
 she loves, is the one offence which cannot 
 be forgiven; and polite society casts her 
 from its pale. In the humble home which 
 
The Purposes of her Plots. 85 
 
 she has chosen for herself, she seems to 
 droop hke a poor, bruised flower, which no 
 sunshine or gentle dews can ever restore to 
 gayety and strength. 
 
 Of Dorothea's two marriages George 
 Eliot herself says, at the close of the book, 
 " Certainly those determining acts of her 1 
 life were not ideally beautiful. They were 
 the mixed result of young and noble im- 
 pulse struggling under prosaic conditions. 
 Among the many remarks passed on her 
 mistakes, it was never said, in the neighbor- 
 hood of Middlemarch, that such mistakes 
 could not have happened if the society into 
 which she was born had not smiled on 
 propositions of marriage from a sickly man 
 to a girl less than half his own age; on 
 modes of education which make a woman's 
 knowledge another name for motley igno- 
 rance ; on rules of conduct which are in flat 
 contradiction with its own loudly asserted 
 beliefs. While this is the social air in which 
 mortals begin to breathe, there will be col- 
 
86 The Purposes of her Plots. 
 
 lisions, such as those in Dorothea's Hfe, 
 where great feehngs will take the aspect of 
 error, and great faith the aspect of illusion. 
 For there is no creature whose inward being 
 is so strong that it is not greatly determined 
 by what lies outside it." 
 
 The ideal marriage for Dorothea would 
 have been with Lydgate, though this she 
 never knows. That he was given a better 
 mental endowment than belongs to the 
 other young men of these novels was doubt- 
 less because he was created to show what 
 order of man would have furnished a fitting 
 husband for Dorothea, had he possessed also 
 a sufficiently pure and lofty nature to appre- 
 ciate at once her noble independence and 
 exalted views. But the common masculine 
 prejudices against anything unusual in a 
 young woman had checked at the outset 
 the admiration which he could not but feel 
 for such a beautiful and serious girl. " She 
 does not look at things from the proper 
 feminine angle," he had said to himself, soon 
 
The Purposes of her Plots. ^^^' 
 
 afte ; hisijacquaintance with her had begun ; 
 " she is a good creature, that fine girl, but a 
 little too earnest. It is troublesonre to talk 
 to such women. They are always wanting 
 reasons ; yet they are too ignorant to under- 
 stand the merits of any question, and usual- 
 ly fall back on their moral sense." So he 
 turns away from her to wed the pretty, ac- 
 complished, but wholly conventional Rosa- 
 mond, who realizes in every respect the ideal 
 of his dreams. 
 
 But it is her influence which proves fatal 
 to the attainment of the one cherished aim, 
 that redeems, to some degree, the world- 
 liness of his nature. This aim is a de- 
 sire to do something for the advancement 
 of medical science, while assisting in the 
 maintenance of a well-ordered public hos- 
 pital. With her narrow intellect and reso- 
 lute will, Rosamond is able to checkmate 
 all his endeavors towards a higher, more 
 unselfish, career. Regarding worldly suc- 
 cess as the only good to be sought, she holds 
 
J 
 
 88 TAe Purposes of her Plots. 
 
 him to what she considers his best inten^sts, 
 and thus rescues him from what seem to 
 her no better than absurd vagaries. 
 
 When, at the last, Lydgate finds himself 
 in sore need of funds for the hospital, and 
 when unjust suspicions against his profes- 
 sional honor, which even his wife shares, cut 
 him to the quick, Dorothea comes forward, 
 as a distant friend, to tender the material 
 aid he requires, and, what is still more grate- 
 ful, to proffer her own noble confidence in 
 his integrity, and her best efforts towards 
 convincing others of his deserts. 
 
 Then he has a glimpse of what such a 
 wife might have been to his life. " She 
 seems to have a fountain of friendship tow- 
 ards men," is the observation he then makes 
 to himself ; " a man can make a friend of her. 
 Well, her love might help a man more than 
 her money." 
 
 And such a marriage would have been to 
 him, indeed, a saving strength and inspira- 
 tion. His desire to make a mere pecuniary 
 
The Purposes of her Plots. 89 
 
 success in his profession subordinate, as 
 soon as possible, to the higher purpose of 
 contributing to the sum of human knowl- 
 edge, and thereby lessening the sum of hu- 
 man ills, would have called out the fervent 
 sympathy and enthusiasm of Dorothea's 
 whole nature. In such a cause she would 
 have labored gladly by his side, inspiring 
 him by her serene confidence, and aiding 
 him with her definite, well -studied plans. 
 The fortune which she regarded as merely 
 intrusted to her for the good of others would 
 have rendered needful service in the fulfil- 
 ment of his generous aims. Thus would 
 Dorothea's life, as well as his own, have 
 been carried steadily onward to lasting hap- 
 piness and success. 
 
 Instead of this, the quiet but obstinate 
 resistance which his plans had always en- 
 countered in his own home, and the cruel 
 suspicions engendered against him by ene- 
 mies without, force him in the end to relin- 
 quish his purpose altogether, and to rest 
 
go The Purposes of her Plots. 
 
 satisfied with such remunerative labors in 
 his profession as have in them a touch of 
 charlatanry. So he dies in middle age, worn 
 out by struggles and despair — a successful 
 physician, according to his wife's standard ; 
 a wretched failure, according to his own. 
 
 Gwendolen, at the opening of her story, 
 finds herself fatherless, and the family fort- 
 unes bankrupt. As the eldest daughter, 
 with no brothers, the burden of providing 
 for the household falls upon her. Her 
 mother, accustomed to luxury and ease, re- 
 veals, in this crisis, no strength of mind or 
 practical ability to do anything for herself, 
 and she leans helplessly on others. Her 
 sisters are too young for exertions in their 
 own behalf; and they need, moreover, an 
 education, as well as present support. A 
 mode of life which shall permit something 
 like repose and refinement seems essential 
 to their happiness. Gwendolen's own tem- 
 perament craves beauty, softness, luxury — all 
 the elegant surroundings which have hither- 
 
The Purposes of her Plots. 91 
 
 to been hers. But the loss of fortune robs 
 her of these, and of even the necessaries of 
 hfe. Some brief experience of the depriva- 
 tions and unlovely accompaniments of pov- 
 erty brings her at length to the resolve to 
 win money for herself and her sisters by a 
 career upon the stage. Nature has endowed 
 her with the requisite talents, and the training 
 she requires may in time be obtained. But 
 neither her artistic nor conventional friends 
 can see anything but failure and disgrace as 
 the outcome of such a step, and they oppose 
 it by every means in their power. She is 
 thus forced to abandon her brave intent. 
 Then it is that a wealthy suitor appears, who 
 desires in a wife such beauty and grace and 
 distinction of manner as remain with Gwen- 
 dolen for her only dower. He professes no 
 romantic attachment to her, and she makes 
 no concealment of her repugnance to him. 
 A knowledge of his dissolute character 
 and sinful past leads her to despise herself 
 when she concludes at last to accept his 
 
92 The Purposes of her Plots. 
 
 hand. But her social world heartily ap- 
 proves. The kindly clergyman who is her 
 guardian and nearest male relative, and her 
 mother and Sisters as well, rejoice that she 
 has been saved from her mad project, and 
 that the relenting Fates have laid at her feet 
 the fortune of which she stands so sorely in 
 need. 
 
 Thus Gwendolen enters upon a merce- 
 nary marriage, as the only means allowed 
 her for propping up the family fortunes. 
 The inevitable misery that awaits her she 
 has foreseen, but it renders her cup none 
 the less bitter when it is given her to drink. 
 Finally, when her union with the elegant, 
 cynical, unyielding Grandcourt has become 
 well-nigh intolerable, she shrinks irresolutely 
 from action at a critical moment when her 
 husband's life might have been saved, and 
 seems to herself ever after to have passively 
 consented to his death. Sorrow and re- 
 morse remain with her as lasting fruits of 
 the marriage to which she had been led to 
 
The Purposes of her Plots. 93 
 
 sacrifice her hopeful young life. She learns, 
 in the years that follow, that Deronda, 
 whom she has come to love and honor, has 
 nothing but pity to give in exchange for 
 her devoted affection. There is no longer 
 anyplace left for her to fill ; and, gazing wist- 
 fully upon another's happiness, she vanishes, 
 like a shadow, from our sight. 
 
 Wit h all these young women, the n, soci- 
 ety has had its way. It has limited their 
 education, hamp ered their efforts^ jprgscribed 
 th eir m arriages. Under such guardianship 
 the narrow-minded and prosaic thrive, the 
 original and intellectual struggle and perish. 
 
 All her novels are different presentations 
 of this one case — of the superior young 
 woman versus society ; and though nature 
 and right are both on her side, society al- 
 ways wins. 
 
 And yet, with such fascinating skill are 
 these lamentable failures portrayed, so ab- 
 sorbing are the situations, so real the char- 
 acters that weave about the heroine this 
 
^4 The Purposes of her Plots. 
 
 strong network of her fate, so close is the 
 observation, so keen the satire, so mellow 
 the wisdom, so lightly glancing the wit, with 
 which this author emblazons the dreary- 
 pathway along which she summons her hero- 
 ine to pass, that, while we behold the pict- 
 ure, we never think to wish it other than it 
 is. For George Eliot was a charmer who 
 led us to find delight in disappointment 
 and doleful prophecy, and who left us, after 
 every recital, only the more eager for an- 
 other fresh tale of needless ruin and woe. 
 
 Plaintive and despairing though it was, 
 hers was the strain for which we listened 
 when the grove was vocal with song. And 
 when, all too soon, her notes passed onward, 
 to swell the " choir invisible " of which she 
 wrote, the lost voice lingered in memory as 
 that of the one vanished nightingale of the 
 wood. Never had its passionate plaint ceased 
 to recall the bitter anguish of life ; never 
 had it forgotten, in any present bliss, " the 
 unfriendly palace in the Thracian wild, the 
 
The Purposes of her Plots. 95 
 
 too-clear web, and her dumb sister's shame." 
 Yet its full undertone of sorrow, its liquid 
 outbursts of despair, held within them a 
 wondrous charm, as if some cherished grief 
 had taken possession of the soul, and defied 
 the final mastery of joy. 
 
V. 
 
 IS REAL LIFE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE 
 FAILURES SHE PORTRAYS? 
 
V. 
 
 If it be said that in her portrayals of 
 failure she was merely copying life, and 
 should not be held responsible for the mod- 
 els found, the reply must be that her canvas 
 is not a faithful copy ; it is but half of the 
 picture. Many wrecks there are, it is true ; 
 but some gallant ships weather all winds 
 and waves, and ride safely into port. Had 
 George Eliot chosen, she would have found 
 facts to justify her in depicting the life of, at 
 least, one talented girl, rounding out, as she 
 moves onward through the world, into a 
 happy and helpful womanhood, with the cov- 
 eted education secured, the equal and hon- 
 orable lover found, the good deeds glorious- 
 ly wrought. 
 
 The comparative ease with which her 
 
lOO Responsibility for the Failures. 
 
 countrywomen obtain, to - day, at Girton, 
 Newnham, and Lady Margaret's colleges, 
 and in the University of London, the high- 
 er education which Maggie so passionately 
 coveted ; and the still greater ease with which 
 American girls gain from the same profess- 
 ors the same instruction which their broth- 
 ers receive, is a good subsequent to the 
 days in which George Eliot wrote these 
 books. But even in her own time, when col- 
 leges for girls seemed an absurd vision, fit- 
 ted for a poet-laureate's metrical sneer, she 
 must have known noteworthy exceptions to 
 the elementary character of woman's educa- 
 tion. Translations and original works had 
 given evidence of the liberal scholarship of 
 Elizabeth Barrett and the mathematical eru- 
 dition of Mary Somerville ; while the classi- 
 cal attainments of Lady Mary Wortley Mon- 
 tagu and Elizabeth Carter had been famous 
 for a century. And college education at 
 that time comprised little besides mathe- 
 matics and the ancient languages. 
 
Responsibility for the Failures. loi 
 
 The roll of philanthropy, even then, could 
 show the names of Elizabeth Fry, Florence 
 Nightingale, and Mary Carpenter. The 
 English and American stage has always had 
 its successful Gwendolens, winning, at home 
 and abroad, not only the wealth of which 
 they and their relatives stand in need, but 
 social honors and the admiration of all. 
 And that an equal, happy marriage is possi- 
 ble even for a superior, study-loving, noble- 
 hearted woman, is readily proved by merely 
 citing the names of Mrs. Browning, Mrs. 
 Somerville, Mrs. John Stuart Mill, Mrs. S. 
 C. Hall, Mary Howitt, Lydia Maria Child, 
 and many others known to the world. And 
 such marriages are seen to increase in num- 
 ber, rather than to diminish, as the minds of 
 women become more thoroughly trained, 
 and an intellectual companionship adds its 
 strength to the other potent bonds that 
 unite forever two individual lives. 
 
 It is the more remarkable, then, that 
 George Eliot, in tracing the careers of her 
 
I02 Responsibility for the Failures. 
 
 chosen heroines, fails to furnish a single ex- 
 ample of joy and triumph, which might serve 
 as a relief to the general gloom of her clos- 
 ing pages. With all her great gifts, she has 
 preferred to remain the Cassandra of fiction, 
 the prophetess of despair. 
 
 To pull down, and not to upbuild, to de- 
 press, and not to exalt, to narrow, and not to 
 expand, to make of the greater the less, and 
 of the higher the low — this appears, indeed, 
 a pitiful mission to be intrusted to a mind 
 as rich and powerful as her own. Not to 
 make of a Dorothea a Rosamond, but of a 
 Rosamond a Dorothea, should recommend 
 itself as a worthier task for a helpful soul. 
 
 And this course would seem to be the 
 one more readily followed ; since a happy 
 ending to a fictitious tale is demanded by 
 the majority of readers as part of their right- 
 ful due. While willing to admit that real 
 life is full of disaster, and that to copy real 
 life is the avowed aim of the modern novel- 
 ist, readers still insist on contemplating in 
 
Responsibility for the Failures. 103 
 
 books the more cheerful aspects of human 
 existence. There, at least, say they, we may 
 be suffered to behold beauty, virtue, and 
 moral strength triumphing over the stupid 
 cohorts of the Philistines, and the wily 
 servitors of vice. Such triumphs, if not 
 universal, are common enough to be repro- 
 duced. And since, O novelist, you stand 
 free to select your models from the varied 
 experiences of mankind, we must insist that 
 you shall duplicate for us the happiness, and 
 not the miseries, of the world. 
 
 If, however, on occasion, you see fit to 
 darken your tale with final failure and de- 
 spair, let the end be something impressive 
 and overwhelming ; let it swoop everything 
 before it into the black horror of the day of 
 doom. Close your dolorous narration like 
 the grand tragedies — like CEdipus Tyran- 
 nus, Hamlet, and King Lear. The ruin is 
 nothing if not complete. Leave not a man 
 alive to clear the stage, or to ring down 
 the curtain for repairs. Revival, reappear- 
 
I04 Responsibility for the Failures. 
 
 ance, must not be suggested by one remain- 
 ing shred or an unbroken bone. 
 
 Should pathos, rather than sorrow, be 
 your melting mood, give us in that, also, a 
 proof of your power. We are weary of com- 
 monplace regrets. One salt drop poised on 
 the quivering lid proclaims you lost; but 
 let floods of hot tears follow each other in 
 resistless tides, and we will extend our par- 
 doning grace. Only such luxury of woe can 
 atone for the pictured happiness we had a 
 right to expect. Thus, in our susceptible 
 years, did we part with Thaddeus of Warsaw, 
 with the Heir of Redclyffe, and the Tolla of 
 Edmund About. 
 
 Now, it is not merely that George Eliot's 
 novels end unhappily, but that never, save 
 in one instance, is the ruin brought about 
 after the grand, heroic, stormy fashion which 
 readers love. The death of Tom and Mag- 
 gie is a hurried tragedy; but in the other 
 books there is, as we proceed, such a petty, 
 gradual collapse of all that her noble char- 
 
Responsibility for the Failures. 105 
 
 acters held dear, that we find ourselves wor- 
 ried and depressed and doubtful at the close; 
 never exalted by a sublime vision, or stunned 
 into a consciousness of dumb, unregarded 
 forces, as if suddenly brought face to face 
 with the stern revenges of fate. 
 
 Everything has somehow vanished before 
 us ; but there has been no crash overhead, 
 as of splintering thunderbolts, no shock 
 beneath our feet, as if the solid earth had 
 ingulfed its teeming life. What has hid 
 the landscape from our gaze has been only 
 the slow blur of a November fog, creeping 
 up over bush and headland, till every glimpse 
 of drooping bough and flowing streamlet is 
 lost behind the gray, monotonous veil. No 
 blast ever comes to tear it asunder; and 
 no sunbeams rarify it into dissolving mists 
 that add a tender grace to what they half 
 reveal. 
 
 George Eliot's heroines do not die ; they 
 do not plunge wildly into sin, suffer stout 
 martyrdom, or surrender proudly to fate. 
 
io6 Responsibility for the Failures. 
 
 They simply fail, and live on. What was a 
 leaping flame becomes a lingering smudge. 
 There are no graves for us to weep over, no 
 consoling visions of a translation to the 
 stars. She of the radiant brow and the in- 
 spiring glance, who walked at times with 
 the angels, and strove to become a saving 
 grace to her people, sits at last crooning sad- 
 ly in a by-lane, by a smoky fireside, content 
 to pass her humdrum husband his mug of 
 small beer. 
 
 For what, ask the admirers of these brave 
 young women, for what were the gods made, 
 if not to dwell in heaven, and to hold the 
 elements in leash .? Shall the fleet denizens 
 of the air forswear their wings, and take to 
 creeping over the earth ? Must a Dorothea 
 be fashioned, that she may serve out clean 
 bibs and fresh porridge to a few pudgy ur- 
 chins } and Romola pace her stately rounds 
 through a forsaken hamlet amid desolate 
 hills .? 
 
 When the two deities from Olympus 
 
Responsibility for the Failures. 107 
 
 came to sojourn with old Philemon and 
 Baucis, they tarried but for a day; and 
 then their wonder-working powers expand- 
 ed the cottage into a glorious temple, and 
 transformed the dutiful mortals who had 
 given them hospitality and cheer into lord- 
 ly trees, which might shade forever the path 
 over which their sacred feet had trod. The 
 humble ceilings failed to cramp their stat- 
 ure; they behaved like deities to the last. 
 
 George Eliot would have kept the gods 
 forever in the little hut, sharing the homely 
 life of the good old couple; and they all 
 would have eaten together of well-cured ba- 
 con and savory herbs to the end of the 
 tale. Far from converting the worn hearth- 
 stone into the polished' step of an altar, 
 with garlands swaying where once the ba- 
 con hung, she would have left the flames 
 of unvisited shrines to flicker and expire, 
 while their guardian divinities sat warm- 
 ing themselves in snug comfort at a peas- 
 ant's fireside. But then, she would have 
 
io8 Responsibility for the Failures. 
 
 said, that is the way with altars in this 
 world. The sun and the winds, and care- 
 less tending, must always prove too much 
 for the divine spark. 
 
VI. 
 
 CAUSES OF THE DESPONDENT TONE OF 
 HER NOVELS. 
 
VI. 
 
 We have seen that the world which 
 George EHot knew could furnish many 
 examples of successful achievement in the 
 lives of its talented women, had she de- 
 sired these for her models ; and that the 
 multitude of her readers would have found 
 far greater pleasure in contemplating such 
 prosperity and happiness as the outcome of 
 her tales. 
 
 Why, then, we are compelled to ask, 
 should she persist in representing life as such 
 a sad business ? why does she prefer, at all 
 times, to lead her radiant maidens along a 
 declining pathway, only to confront them at 
 the end with a gate forever barred ? Clear- 
 ly, there must have been, in the mind of the 
 author herself, some strong determining 
 
112 Causes of Despondent Tone. 
 
 bias, which led her to seek for what was 
 gloomy and depressing, and to devote her- 
 self to its careful portrayal. 
 
 This bias, we must think, is to be found, 
 first of all, in the nature with which she had 
 been endowed. With all her transcendent 
 gifts, she lacked that crowning gift of a 
 cheerful temperament, which seeks for joy 
 instead of sorrow, breaks easily into merry 
 laughter, and surveys the world with a 
 glance so confident and brave that evil 
 shrinks before it, and good comes boldly 
 forth to take its possessor by the hand. To 
 her downcast vision, every sunbeam brought 
 an attendant shadow, which stretched and 
 expanded till all the scene around her lay ob- 
 scured ; every triumphant day was but the 
 herald of a rayless, enthralling night. She 
 felt oppressed with the miseries of the 
 world — as what benevolent soul does not, in 
 its thoughtful moods? — but with her it was a 
 depression that could never be shaken off. 
 Not only her novels, but her letters and 
 
Causes of Despondent Tone. 113 
 
 journals, give abundant indication of this 
 constitutional trait. 
 
 Joined to a despondent temperament was 
 the quiet, passive existence which poor 
 health imposed ; so that brisk, adventurous 
 action, and the exultant heart-throbs which 
 accompany it, could never be hers. And to 
 these influences must be ascribed, in a large 
 measure, that lack of aggressive energy, of 
 vivid, personal force, which is apparent in 
 all that she wrote and all that she did. 
 
 We cannot blame her, then, that the 
 world she saw took on the sombre aspects 
 of her thought. But in passing, with ob- 
 servant gaze, before the varied scenes of hu- 
 man experience, she journeyed like a trav- 
 eller who has at the start provided himself 
 with colored lenses of such dolorous hue 
 that all the glad sunshine before him seems 
 to wear the ashy pallor of an eclipse. Soft 
 grasses weave about him a carpet of vivid 
 green ; the rain-washed heavens show spaces 
 
 of tenderest blue and clouds of. pearly lus- 
 8 
 
114 Causes of Despondent Tone. 
 
 tre ; from wayside hedges the wild rose 
 nods to him its crimson petals, and the lily- 
 its freckled cup ; but all these glowing dyes 
 are tinged and subdued to one neutral tint 
 by the medium through which he looks. 
 The world he should paint for us would be 
 a world despoiled of half its resplendent 
 beauty and gladsome charm. 
 
 The thought cannot but suggest itself 
 to one who studies closely her life and her 
 works, that in portraying the unions of 
 which society approved as often so unfit 
 and disastrous, she could not rise superior 
 to suggestions evoked by her own experi- 
 ence. In the so-called marriage which she 
 had contracted long before her earliest nov- 
 els were written, she had plainly flung down 
 the gauntlet to the conventional world ; and 
 that world, in return, had as plainly shown 
 her that its views of what constituted the 
 rightfulness of marriage remained at direct 
 variance with her own. Old friends who 
 had shared her philosophic and religious 
 
Causes of Despondent Tone. 115 
 
 opinions, even the brother for whose return- 
 ing favor she waited in vain during the en- 
 tire continuance of her union with Mr. 
 Lewes, grieved over the step she had taken, 
 as a sharp declension from the high con- 
 duct they had a right to expect ; and they 
 withdrew, in consequence, their approving 
 friendship. 
 
 Concerned, as she always was, to ascertain 
 the right for herself, beneath all time-hon- 
 ored glosses, and testing, as we shall see, the 
 moral character of every act solely by its re- 
 sults, she continued to hold firmly to the 
 position she had taken as seemingly the one 
 which her lasting judgment approved. 
 
 But that she felt keenly the condemnation 
 meted out to her is apparent from the few 
 among her published letters which treat of 
 this period of her life. She had been forced 
 to submit in silence to the verdict passed 
 upon her ; but, while doing this, she could 
 not fail to question, on her part, the sacred 
 character of many of the unions which so- 
 
ii6 Causes of Despondent Tone. 
 
 ciety fostered and blessed, and for which 
 her Pharisaical judges had no censuring 
 word. There were sanctified marriages 
 which seemed to her in their very nature 
 unhallowed and base ; and, according to the 
 tenets to which she held, to trace out con- 
 clusively their evil consequences was to 
 demonstrate to herself that they were wrong. 
 When, in time, this world which had dis- 
 owned her turned to ponder with eagerness 
 her written words, the occasion offered for 
 such indirect vindication of herself as the 
 delicate reserves of personal feeling would 
 permit. It was an opportunity which only 
 acknowledged genius could command ; and 
 the grand revenge to which it invited was 
 possibly saved from any tinge of pettiness 
 or spite by the presence in her soul of an 
 abiding conviction — wholly mistaken though 
 it must seem to us — that her course had 
 been justified by a higher than human law; 
 and that, in depicting the essential evil of 
 many marriages which the Church sane- 
 
Causes of Despondent Tone. ii"] 
 
 tions and society approves, she was labor- 
 ing for the best interests of her sex. Ever 
 solicitous to do all in her power towards bene- 
 fiting mankind, she may have felt impelled 
 to speak in behalf of the young and noble 
 women of her own day, and of days that 
 were to come, whose extinguished happi- 
 ness and blighted lives would prove too 
 costly a sacrifice for maintaining the hollow 
 respectabilities of their social world. 
 
 It is not surprising, therefore, that a por- 
 trayal of the disastrous results which accrue 
 to women from the unequal marriages which 
 society allows, seems to form the underlying 
 purpose of so many of her books. Indeed, 
 nearly all the later novels may be regarded 
 as varied illustrations of this one idea — of 
 the evil outcome of every marriage, how- 
 ever formalized and approved, which is not 
 founded, primarily, upon a mutual love, then, 
 upon a proper correspondence in age, con- 
 dition, and mental and moral attainment, 
 joined with a genuine respect for each oth- 
 
1 1 8 Causes of Despondent Tone. 
 
 er's differing talents and individual aims. 
 If, from the equal, happy unions to be seen 
 about her, she turned to fix her gaze only 
 upon those which were false and pernicious, 
 it was because her nature led her to single 
 out what was wrong, and to attempt to rec- 
 tify it by the most direct means. 
 
 Unfortunately, society can furnish, to an 
 observer as keen as herself, too many exam- 
 ples of evil called by the specious name of 
 good ; and she has evidently wrought in the 
 interests of justice, rather than of mercy, in 
 her unsparing delineations. But nothing 
 less could be required of one who deemed 
 it her duty at all times to serve as the un- 
 flinching advocate of truth. Before self- 
 righteous judges she held a polished mir- 
 ror, that they might see their own undis- 
 torted selves. If it proved an accusing re- 
 flection, she did not hold herself to blame. 
 Thus she has made it clear — if we will but 
 read her deeper meanings — that if they who 
 had so sternly condemned her could not ac- 
 
Causes of Despondent Tone. 119 
 
 cept her view of what constituted a proper 
 marriage, neither, on her part, could she ac- 
 cept theirs. 
 
 Nowhere, so far as we know, does she 
 more directly justify her course, unless it be 
 in the novel which is generally recognized 
 as a picture of her early life. " The Mill on 
 the Floss " represents the heroine's sudden 
 flight with a lover who is already the be- 
 trothed of another as an act innocent in it- 
 self, and excusable, from the circumstances 
 that attended it ; but it calls down upon her 
 the bitter reproof and lasting alienation of 
 a beloved brother, and the relentless con- 
 demnation of her social world. The situa- 
 tion is softened, but is virtually unchanged. 
 
 When, to the suggestions of her own tem- 
 perament and of her experience of life, we 
 add the influence of that peculiar religious 
 and ethical creed which she was early led to 
 adopt, we can have no difficulty in under- 
 standing why it is that her novels are so uni- 
 versally despondent in their tone. 
 
I20 Causes of Despondent Tone. 
 
 Perhaps the fundamental principles of 
 her belief cannot be more clearly and brief- 
 ly indicated than by giving the words of a 
 personal friend, in his report of her conver- 
 sation :* 
 
 " Taking as her text the three words which 
 have been used so often as the inspiring 
 trumpet-calls of men — the words, God, Im- 
 mortality, Duty — she pronounced, with ter- 
 rible earnestness, how inconceivable was 
 the first, how unbelievable the second, and 
 yet how peremptory and absolute the third. 
 Never, perhaps, have sterner accents af- 
 firmed the sovereignty of impersonal and 
 unrecompensing Law." 
 
 Or, in our own words, there was, accord- 
 ing to her creed, no supreme Creator, de- 
 manding right conduct from his creatures, 
 and himself furnishing the instinctive sense 
 to determine what right conduct is ; no life 
 beyond this, to supplement our existence 
 
 * F. W. H. Myers, in The Century Magazine, Nov. 
 
Causes of Despondent Tone. 121 
 
 here ; to atone for its suffering and to rec- 
 ompense its steadfast adherence to duty ; no 
 comprehension of duty, except as a gener- 
 ous impulse we may chance to feel to ex- 
 tend aid and comfort to fellow-creatures as 
 hopeless as ourselves, creatures who have 
 no home in any other world, and, like the 
 butterflies, are fashioned but for a day ; and 
 that a day, not of warmth and bloom and 
 fragrance, but, oftener, of searching blasts, 
 sullen skies, and frozen fields. 
 
 Certain general statements are necessarily 
 bound up in such a creed. Its first nega- 
 tion implies that the race of men exist, not 
 because of any clear intent and far-reaching 
 design on the part of a high creative power, 
 but simply as a chance product of restless 
 forces, an accidental efflorescence of crea- 
 tive energies that exist in the very nature of 
 matter, and whose blindly progressive im- 
 pulses move onward perpetually, evolving 
 the world and all that in it is. 
 
 From the second negation it follows that 
 
122 Causes of Despondent Tone. 
 
 this earthly existence ends at death in an 
 absolute cessation of the individual life, its 
 material part disintegrating into the myriad 
 atoms of which it was composed, and these 
 carrying with them into new combinations 
 the corresponding elements of that unseen 
 essence or force which we call spirit. Spir- 
 it and matter being thus inseparable, the 
 dissolution of the body means the dissolu- 
 tion of the soul. For our physical being is 
 but the manifestation of some close but tem- 
 porary union of separable atoms ; these 
 once released from their compelling bond, 
 and the entire organized life of an individ- 
 ual must cease. 
 
 So far, then, as man is concerned, the 
 present is all he can possess. Whatever 
 he is to accomplish or enjoy must be com- 
 prised between birth and death upon this 
 planet. 
 
 Such being the case, it becomes of the 
 utmost importance that our brief mortal ex- 
 istence be a happy and prosperous one. 
 
Causes of Despondent Tone. 123 
 
 The different natures with which we find 
 ourselves endowed — the physical, mental, 
 and spiritual — must obtain here untram- 
 melled growth and abundant exercise, if we 
 are to produce such results in the external 
 world, and to enjoy such happiness within 
 ourselves, as would make it worth our while 
 to have lived at all. 
 
 But, to George Eliot's thinking, this earth, 
 whether considered as the scene of active 
 effort or of passive pleasure, was a forlorn 
 and sorry place. The world Vv^hich her 
 chance forces had evolved appeared a most 
 unfortunate product. The existence it con- 
 ferred was to be endured, rather than en- 
 joyed. She sincerely believed that the sor- 
 row to be met with in the average human 
 lot far outweighed the joy ; that little un- 
 mixed comfort was to be found, and com- 
 paratively little good could be wrought. 
 Things tended perpetually to the bad. The 
 loving lost their friends, and lost them for- 
 ever; the innocent suffered for the guilty. 
 
124 Causes of Despondent Tone. 
 
 and received nowhere a recompense; the 
 weak staggered under burdens which the 
 strong had shirked. Physical pain, mental 
 anxiety, spiritual anguish, were the common 
 and inevitable inheritance. 
 
 The gloom and hopelessness of such a 
 creed she made no effort to conceal. " Life 
 is a bad business, but we must make the 
 best of it," is a sentence she quotes in one 
 of her letters, adding the comment, " to 
 which philosophy I say Amen." Some- 
 times, as we are told, she expressed to inti- 
 mate friends a conviction that it would be 
 well if human existence could be ended at 
 once and forever by the voluntary suicide 
 of all individuals of the race. Hamlet's 
 doubting query " To be or not to be V re- 
 ceived from her a most emphatic decision 
 in favor of the negative, as the greater 
 good. 
 
 While no one could insist more strenu- 
 ously than did George Eliot upon our 
 bounden allegiance to right and duty, it is 
 
Causes of Despondent Tone. 125 
 
 evident that her definition of these terms 
 would differ essentially from our own. Duty 
 could not appear to her, as to Wordsworth, 
 in the guise of a " stern daughter of the 
 voice of God," for all belief in deity, and in 
 a divine origin of the universe, had been 
 swept from her mind. Neither was it to be 
 determined by that instinctive moral sense 
 which we call conscience, and which we 
 hold to be the silent voice of God himself, 
 given to every soul as its sufficient monitor 
 and guide ; nor yet by religious principles, 
 imbibed unconsciously from the general sur- 
 roundings, or deduced later in life from per- 
 sonal reflection and an adopted creed. Both 
 these accepted standards of right were re- 
 garded by her as nothing more than the ac- 
 cumulated prejudices of early training. Like 
 the general trust in God and faith in immor- 
 tality, they were merely fond delusions of 
 the race, inherited from an ignorant and 
 credulous past. 
 
 Her theory of life required her to consid- 
 
126 Causes of Despondent Tone. 
 
 er only man's relations upon earth with fel- 
 low-men ; and, accordingly, she defines duty 
 to be that course of action which tends to 
 make those around us the happiest possible, 
 or, rather, the least miserable. Right and 
 wrong resolve themselves, then, into a mere 
 question of results. An act must indicate 
 its near and ultimate sequences before its 
 place can be assigned in the category of 
 moral acts. 
 
 Such a thing as absolute right can have 
 no existence in her moral world. To at- 
 tempt to do one's duty, regardless of conse- 
 quences, would be simply an absurdity; 
 since consequences are the chief factor in 
 determining what duty is. And the heroic 
 utterance, " I will do right, though the heav- 
 ens fall !" could only awaken in her mind 
 the reflection that if the heavens threaten 
 to fall, then the action which sets them tot- 
 tering is manifestly wrong. What dispo- 
 sition the skies promise to make of them- 
 selves must first be ascertained, if one 
 
Causes of Despondent Tone. 127 
 
 would learn what he ought to do. The right 
 and the expedient thus become synonymous 
 terms, if by the latter we understand the 
 advantage that is most readily attainable 
 for others as well as for ourselves. 
 
 The following passage from her writings 
 illustrates this point : " That favorite view, 
 expressed so often in Clough's poems, of 
 doing duty in blindness as to the result, is 
 likely to deepen the substitution of egoistic 
 yearnings for really moral impulses. We 
 cannot be utterly blind to the results of 
 duty, since that cannot be duty which is not 
 already judged to be for human good. To 
 say the contrary is to say that mankind 
 have reached no inductions as to what is 
 for their good or evil." 
 
 Accordingly, it was not by looking above 
 or within that George Eliot ascertained 
 what duty enjoined ; but by looking without 
 and beyond, to the utmost limit of her vis- 
 ion. The solving of ethical problems was 
 made a purely intellectual process, but one 
 
128 Causes of Despondent Tone. 
 
 demanding imagination, experience, and 
 sympathetic appreciation of another's feel- 
 ings and aims. 
 
 This forecasting of results must ever re- 
 main a slow and complicated process, since 
 the consequences of any event are many and 
 far-reaching, and no human ken is strong 
 enough to detect the last vibration which 
 may be produced upon the future lives of 
 those around us by the most trifling act. 
 No wonder, then, that even for one so wise 
 and sympathetic as George Eliot herself, a 
 summary, confident decision in any matter 
 of ethics was an impossibility. 
 
 And since every special act leads to its own 
 peculiar results, it would follow that these 
 need to be forecast and considered anew for 
 each individual case, in order that the right 
 course of action may be made clear. This 
 decision, when reached, would be applica- 
 ble only to the occasion for which it was 
 sought, and become valueless if applied to 
 any other. 
 
Causes of Despondent Tone. 129 
 
 She denied, therefore, that there could ex- 
 ist any general moral principles, few and 
 stringent, to be kept at all times in^mind, 
 as supplying comprehensive tests, perennial 
 guides, for the determining of right conduct 
 — such principles as ordinary mortals em- 
 ploy for their swift, unfaltering decisions. 
 Neither could human law, as the authorita- 
 tive definition of what constitutes right and 
 wrong in the social state, be accepted by 
 her as binding ; since no general rules, by 
 whomsoever framed, could adequately deter- 
 mine one's duty in every case. 
 
 " The Mill on the Floss " contains a pro- 
 nounced expression of these views. There 
 she says : " The great problem of the shift- 
 ing relation between passion and duty is 
 clear to no man who is capable of appre- 
 hending it; the question whether the mo- 
 ment has come in which a man has fallen 
 below the possibility of a renunciation that 
 will carry any efficacy, and must accept the 
 sway of a passion against which he had 
 9 
 
130 Causes of Despondent Tone. 
 
 struggled as a trespass, is one for which we 
 have no master-key that will fit all cases. . . . 
 Moral judgments must remain false and hol- 
 low unless they are checked and enlightened 
 by a perpetual reference to the special cir- 
 cumstances that mark the individual lot." 
 
 " All people of broad, strong sense have 
 an instinctive repugnance to the men of 
 maxims. The mysterious complexity of 
 our life is not to be embraced by maxims; 
 and to lace ourselves up in formulas of that 
 sort is to repress all the divine promptings 
 and inspirations that spring from growing 
 insight and sympathy." 
 
 Contrast with this the words which Char- 
 lotte Bronte, in her novel of " Jane Eyre," 
 makes the heroine utter, when the man 
 whom she passionately loves, and whom till 
 now she has believed she could honorably 
 wed, has been shown to be the lawful hus- 
 band of another. At the very altar she has 
 first learned of the existence of a wife hope- 
 lessly insane, dwelling in concealment un- 
 
Causes of Despondent Tone. 131 
 
 der her husband's roof, a wife who, even in 
 sane hours, could never be other than an 
 unfit and unloved companion. Jane returns 
 to her master's house, only to depart from 
 its environment, and from all that she holds 
 dear in the world. Rochester, also heart- 
 broken, pleads with the friendless and home- 
 less girl to remain with him still, and not to 
 abandon him to despair and ruin; urging 
 that in reality he has no wife, despite the 
 law which so unjustly binds him. He 
 promises to fly with her to foreign lands, 
 where none shall know their story. But 
 Jane Eyre makes her resolute refusal in 
 these words: 
 
 " I will keep the law given by God, sanc- 
 tioned by man. I will hold to the princi- 
 ples received by me when I was sane, and 
 not mad, as I am now. Laws and principles 
 are not for the times when there is no temp- 
 tation ; they are for such moments as this, 
 when body and soul rise in mutiny against 
 their rigor. Stringent are they; inviolate 
 
132 Causes of Despondent Tone. 
 
 they shall be. If at my individual conven- 
 ience I might break them, what would be 
 their worth? They have a worth — so I 
 have always believed ; and if I cannot be- 
 lieve it now, it is because I am insane, quite 
 insane, with my veins running fire, and my 
 heart beating faster than I can count its 
 throbs. Preconceived opinions, foregone 
 determinations, are all I have at this hour 
 to stand by ; there I plant my foot." 
 
 Thus, to the question, shall passionate 
 love, self-interest, or any seeming good for 
 ourselves or for others, be suffered to sweep 
 away the long-recognized barriers between 
 right and wrong? she gives for answer an 
 emphatic and unhesitating No. Charlotte 
 Bronte's heroine considers it a profanation 
 even to weigh at such a time, in any indi- 
 vidual balance, values which the instinct and 
 conscience of the race have held as fixed 
 and absolute. And self-respect scorns a re- 
 lationship, however excusable in her own 
 eyes, which would make her personal honor 
 
Causes of Despondent Tone. 133 
 
 seem other than stainless in the eyes of the 
 world. 
 
 In the recent memoirs of George Eliot 
 we find her own singular comment upon 
 this situation in " Jane Eyre." It seems to 
 have been the one point in the novel which 
 strongly arrested her thought, upon her first 
 reading of the book, in 1848. This was not 
 long after its publication, and eleven years 
 before the first of her own novels was pro- 
 duced. 
 
 She writes then to a friend : " I have read 
 ' Jane Eyre,' and shall be glad to know 
 what you admire in it. All self-sacrifice is 
 good, but one would like it to be in a some- 
 what nobler cause than that of a diabolical 
 law which chains a man, soul and body, to a 
 putrefying carcass. However, the book is 
 interesting; only I wish the characters 
 would talk a little less like the heroes and 
 heroines of police reports." 
 
 The comment is unusually denunciatory 
 for one who, as her later writings show, had 
 
1 34 Causes of Despondent Tone. 
 
 really a warm admiration for the Bronte 
 novels, including the greatest of them all. 
 
 It was six years after these vehement words 
 were written when George Eliot found her- 
 self, in her own life, confronted with the very 
 question which had been presented to the 
 heroine of Charlotte Bronte's book. A man 
 whom she had learned to love, but who was 
 still legally bound as the husband of another, 
 pleaded with her to regard herself as his wife, 
 despite the fact that neither law nor society 
 could recognize her as such. In her case 
 the question was differently met ; the an- 
 swer she gave was a quiet but decisive Yes. 
 In accordance with that decision she shaped 
 her life for the next twenty-five years ; and 
 this in the face of a social ostracism that 
 cost her dear. 
 
 If there were special circumstances which 
 made such a course clearly right in her own 
 eyes, they have not been made known. In 
 no writing yet given to the world has she 
 defended it as in direct conformity with her 
 
Causes of Despondent Tone. 135 
 
 moral creed. But her readers feel confident 
 that one who at all times so earnestly advo- 
 cated a self-denying devotion to right could 
 not have made, in this most important rela- 
 tion of life, an unworthy yielding to self, a 
 weak surrender to what she held in her soul 
 to be wrong. This confidence in the essen- 
 tial integrity of her conduct, with the long 
 and happy continuance of the union thus 
 entered upon in defiance of civil and relig- 
 ious rites, has evidently led her admirers to 
 conclude that law and principle, which they 
 still hold inviolable for all others and for 
 themselves, may in her case be regarded as 
 properly annulled. It is a view which no 
 one can fail to regret who considers alle- 
 giance to moral principle and respect for law 
 as equally incumbent upon all, and essen- 
 tial to the highest welfare of the race. Nei- 
 ther reverence for genius nor charity for 
 wrong-doing can demand that we shall call 
 things by other than their real names, or 
 recognize two diverse standards of moral 
 
136 Causes 0/ Despondent Tone. 
 
 conduct, one for the simple-minded, and 
 another for tho-se who are more richly en- 
 dowed. 
 
 George Eliot's advocacy of a peculiar 
 pessimistic philosophy, resulting in the un- 
 sound ethical bias which appears in most of 
 her writings, and in the one leading event 
 of her life, is commonly attributed to her 
 fellowship with authors who professed simi- 
 lar views. Her creed was mainly derived, 
 without doubt, from her Coventry friends. 
 But the comment upon " Jane Eyre," which 
 has just been cited, plainly indicates that 
 before she had met either Herbert Spencer 
 or Mr. Lewes she had come to question, with 
 no little defiant indignation, the inherent 
 right and authoritative force of certain laws 
 which regulate the institutions of social life. 
 It is manifest that, even then, the moral 
 character of an act had ceased to exist for 
 her independently of its relationships, and 
 that principle was already, in a large meas- 
 ure, a mere question of results. 
 
VII. 
 
 THE STANDARD OF ETHICS WHICH 
 HER NOVELS REVEAL. 
 
VII. 
 
 If we seek to find George Eliot's peculiar 
 system of belief expressed in her novels, we 
 shall need to look deeper than the surface. 
 Yet it is the surface alone which the ma- 
 jority of readers consider ; and there they 
 find enforced certain sterling moral truths 
 which they have hitherto accepted as just, 
 but which derive from her masterly presen- 
 tation a new and stronger emphasis. 
 
 It is clearly seen that every novel has an 
 earnest purpose in view, that it illustrates 
 some stern and wholesome moral law. The 
 serious issues of conduct are ever present 
 to her thought. She recognizes in all her 
 writing the inexorable nature of retributive 
 justice, the certainty that evil deeds lead to 
 evil results, not only for the guilty doer, but 
 
140 Her Standard of Ethics. 
 
 for the innocent who are associated with 
 him in life — for family and friends. This 
 undeniable truth she is always anxious to 
 enforce. It seems to her a kind of ethical 
 Fate, as stern and terrible in its retributions 
 as the more material Fates whom we see 
 personified in Greek poetry. 
 
 Horace gives utterance to the same truth 
 when he says : 
 
 " Saepe Diespiter 
 Neglectus incesto addidit integrum : 
 Raro antecedentem scelestum 
 Deseruit pede poena claudo." 
 
 According to her teaching, self-gratifica- 
 tion is the source of all our woes. We are 
 to be self-denying, considerate of others, 
 watchful against the first surrender to temp- 
 tation. No forgiveness can screen us from 
 the consequences of selfish, ignoble acts. 
 
 This teaching is all noble, so far as it 
 goes. And that she really cared much for 
 such conduct on the part of her fellow-beings 
 as seemed to her right, we know from her 
 letters, as well as from her books. 
 
Her Standard of Ethics. 141 
 
 But these truths which she so strenuously 
 maintains were not the outcome of her own 
 religious creed, and are not deducible from 
 the system of philosophy which her later 
 thought adopted. Her deep sense of moral 
 obligation, her love of uprightness in deal- 
 ing, of simple sincerity and honesty in 
 thought and deed, were a direct inheritance 
 from the beliefs which her youth had so 
 fervently cherished, or had come to her in- 
 directly, through parentage and early home 
 training. 
 
 They were not abandoned in the light of 
 later convictions, but were rather the more 
 strenuously enforced. And the value of 
 that sturdy morality upon which she laid 
 such constant stress, and which enjoins as' 
 binding the faithful observance of every ob- 
 ligation towards our fellows, must gain an 
 added emphasis when we see its insistence 
 coming from one whose conception of hu- 
 man society may do without God and im- 
 mortality, but cannot do without that. In- 
 
142 Her Standard of Ethics. 
 
 dependently of all divine enforcement, of 
 prospective rewards and punishments, and 
 simply as a matter of general self-interest 
 in the present life, absolute integrity of deal- 
 ing between the majority of the human race 
 still remained for her the indispensable con- 
 dition of a tolerable existence among men. 
 
 It is these minor moralities which we find 
 so clearly enforced upon her pages. The 
 salient features of her distinctive creed, its 
 main underlying principles, are likewise 
 there ; but they are hidden deep in the 
 structure of the work, and will escape the no- 
 tice of any but a close and thoughtful reader. 
 
 This would result from the motive which 
 led her to write fiction, in preference to ethi- 
 cal and philosophical works. The characters 
 that her imagination fashioned out of the 
 elements around her were forced to respect, 
 in appearance, at least, the system of ethics 
 and religion that was generally received. 
 She wrote for popularity; and the world 
 which was to furnish her audience was not 
 
Her Standard of Ethics. 143 
 
 to be shocked in its most reverently held 
 beliefs. Statements which should deny the 
 very existence of that deity and of that fut- 
 ure life around which were centred all the 
 sacred faiths and most cherished hopes of 
 her readers would lead them to close her 
 pages at once and forever. 
 
 She was thus forbidden to give any pro- 
 nounced expression to her own distinctive 
 creed. But a mind as sincere and uncom- 
 promising as her own could make no hypo- 
 critical assent to what it had rejected as 
 untrue. If her opinions were not to be ob- 
 truded, neither, on the other hand, were they 
 to be denied. 
 
 Beneath all the seeming conformity to 
 accepted religious doctrines, some observ- 
 ant minds, even among her earliest readers, 
 did not fail to detect a certain singularity 
 in her treatment of moral questions, when 
 these were presented for solution to the 
 heroines of her books. 
 
 In nearly all her novels — and, possibly, 
 
, i44y' Her Standard of Ethics. 
 
 in those of most writers of a decidedly mor- 
 al bias — the main action of the story comes 
 to hinge, at length, upon a struggle in the 
 mind of the hero as to which of two oppo- 
 i site courses he shall pursue. One, difficult 
 ' and unattractive, leads to right, honor, and 
 final happiness; the other, fair and seduc- 
 tive, tends to evil and lasting ruin. The 
 struggle is between right and wrong; be- 
 tween allegiance to duty and indulgence of 
 self. The distinction is clearly marked. 
 It is mostly a question of will ; of strength 
 to resist what the soul recognizes as fatal 
 to self-respect. The choice which shall be 
 made at this crisis becomes the turning- 
 point of the hero's career, and marks the 
 culmination of such interest as previous 
 chapters have evoked in our minds. 
 
 An instance of this has already been 
 mentioned as occurring in " Jane Eyre." 
 Another is found in " The Mill on the Floss," 
 when Stephen begs Maggie to accompany 
 him upon the river. 
 
Her Standard of Ethics. 145 
 
 In such crises George Eliot unmistaka- 
 bly reveals the peculiarities of her creed. 
 Her heroines, brought to confront such a 
 problem, and standing irresolute before it, 
 show no instant recognition of the nature 
 of the two courses before them, and make 
 no appeal to God or to time-honored prin- 
 ciples of right as their stay and defence 
 against temptation. Instead of this, they 
 are represented as undergoing a strangely 
 protracted exercise of mind, with the pur- 
 pose of determining which is the right and 
 which the wrong of the two opposite paths. 
 The decision to be made does not seem to 
 be a question of will, but of intelligence. 
 A prolonged scanning of the results likely 
 to follow either step — which we now know 
 to be George Eliot's own test of the moral 
 character of an act — is what we see her her- 
 oines employ when they would determine 
 their rightful course. They ascertain, rath- 
 er than feel, the difference between right 
 and wrong. While we observe them, they 
 10 
 
146 Her Standard of Ethics. 
 
 ponder, deliberate, and are lost. But the 
 failures they make would be held by their 
 author to be the natural outcome of life. 
 
 George Eliot reveals — unconsciously, per- 
 haps — her own personal interest in the study 
 of these problems which she gives her char- 
 acters to solve. She has none of that utter 
 ignoring of individual preference, that entire 
 subordination of self, which belongs to the 
 dramatist ; still less can she maintain a 
 calm indifference concerning the result — 
 such as leads Goethe, when delineating a 
 moral conflict, to view carelessly the final 
 settling of the balance which he holds with 
 so steady a hand, and watches with so cool 
 an eye. He notes the various fluctuations 
 from side to side, only that he may portray 
 them aright, and shows himself so much of 
 an artist that he ceases to be a moral being. 
 We see that the termination is immaterial 
 to him ; the process alone is interesting. 
 
 Yet, in his case, Art herself suffers be- 
 cause Right is not preferred. It is the pas- 
 
Her Standard of Ethics. 147 
 
 sive indifference in the author's soul which 
 takes color, depth, grandeur of purpose, 
 from his noblest works. It is the manifest 
 championship of right by the most dramatic 
 genius which the world has seen that gives 
 to Shakespeare's plays such a background 
 of moral dignity, of fitting, harmonious rela- 
 tionship with the universe, as revealing in 
 all things the supremacy of moral law. In 
 this he reflects no merely personal prefer- 
 ence, but rather the essential moral basis 
 of all created life, as this was rendered clear 
 to his penetrative gaze. 
 
 In her evident advocacy of the right 
 throughout her works, George Eliot is more 
 akin to Shakespeare than to Goethe. We 
 see her always intent upon the nature of 
 the result, watching with anxious solicitude 
 the prolonged wavering of the scales, re- 
 specting every vacillation that delays the 
 final poise, but rejoicing in her heart that 
 good, and not evil, tips the scale at last. 
 Although her definition of the terms good 
 
148 Her Standard of Ethics. 
 
 and evil may not at all times coincide with 
 our own, we honor the lofty earnestness of 
 soul which is concerned in every struggle to 
 have the right prevail. 
 
 That her novels were intended to embody 
 her theories of life in a deeper and more 
 general sense than has been noted here is 
 apparent from the following statement in ' 
 one of her letters : ^ 
 
 '•' My books have for their main bearing a 
 conclusion without which I could not have 
 cared to write any representation of human 
 life; namely, that the fellowship between 
 man and man, which has been the principle 
 of development, social and moral, is not de- 
 pendent on conceptions of what is not man ; 
 and that the idea of God, so far as it has 
 been a high spiritual influence, is the idea 
 of a goodness entirely human ; i. e., an ex- 
 altation of the human." 
 
 We have seen what were the leading prin- 
 ciples of that system of belief in accordance 
 with which she shaped, not only her own 
 
Her Standard of Ethics. 149 
 
 conduct, but that of the heroines of her 
 books. When united with the other potent 
 influences already mentioned as controlling 
 her daily life — namely, her despondent tem- 
 perament, her invalidism, sedentary occupa- 
 tion, and exclusion from much of the social 
 intercourse of her time — these principles 
 served to permeate all her thought, all her 
 teaching, with a spirit of sad acquiescence, 
 of submission to inevitable evil, and of> de- 
 spairing devotion to right. Gloom and hope- 
 lessness were the only possible outcome of 
 such a nature, strengthened by such a creed. 
 Yet her gentle kindliness of heart, joined 
 with that syinpathetic understanding of an- 
 other's trials which she sedulously cultivat- 
 ed as her chief duty, gave to her acts, as to 
 her words, a soft tenderness which went far 
 to veil the hardness and barrenness of her 
 faith. 
 
-VIII. 
 HER RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
VIII. 
 
 One would think that the effect of such 
 a creed upon its disciples would be to ren- 
 der a state of stoical indifference and dumb 
 inaction the chief blessing to be sought. 
 For to reduce infinitely the value of human 
 existence is to weaken, in like degree, the 
 strength of every motive for its improve- 
 ment, and to discourage any endeavor in 
 its behalf. 
 
 Yet we know that George Eliot felt im- 
 pelled at all times to labor towards alleviat- 
 ing the inherent miseries of life. She was 
 solicitous to help her fellow-mortals; even 
 though the utmost happiness they could 
 win would be only a transient gleam of 
 light flitting across a canopy of sullen 
 clouds. In the exertions she put forth in 
 
154 Her Religion of Humanity. 
 
 their behalf she was leading, as she be- 
 lieved, a forlorn hope ; but she did it with 
 firm resolution, slackening no effort because 
 ultimate defeat was assured. 
 
 That she wrought under a heavy load, 
 and at fearful odds with fate, seemed to her 
 no reason why she should cease to work at 
 all. On the contrary, she felt impelled to 
 labor the more because of this, since the 
 source of her effort was pity. A profound 
 compassion moved her to do her utmost for 
 fellow -creatures who, like herself, have no 
 all-loving Father to sustain them in times 
 of trial, and so can only lean helplessly upon 
 each other, and derive from a brother's sym- 
 pathy some poor solace for their woes. She 
 would have them minister to each other, be- 
 cause there is no one else to aid them ; she 
 would smooth their earthly paths, because 
 these lead inevitably down to death, amid 
 scenes of pain and suffering; and to add, 
 through indifference or blundering, one 
 pang the more to the woes they are com- 
 
Her Religion of Humanity. 155 
 
 pelled to endure would be to aggravate, with 
 needless cruelty, the wretchedness of their 
 lot. Thus, to a friend, she wrote : " Heaven 
 help us ! said the old religion ; the new one, 
 from its very lack of that faith, will teach 
 us all the more to help one another." 
 
 Sympathy for those around us, then, she 
 insists upon as our chief obligation to the 
 race. " What do we live for," she asks, in 
 one of her novels, " if not to make life less 
 difificult to each other.?" To understand 
 clearly another's needs, to feel his peculiar 
 sorrows as if they were our own, this was for 
 her the supreme beatitude of saintly attain- 
 ment. 
 
 To render mankind wiser, as well as hap- 
 pier, appeared to her a kindred duty, never 
 to be disclaimed. She was concerned to pro- 
 mote their better education ; not that life, 
 as a whole, could, by any wisdom, be made 
 anything but a failure, a journey no whence, 
 no whither, the flame of a vanishing spark, 
 but that its possessor might be enabled to 
 
156 Her Religion of Humanity. 
 
 draw from it the full modicum of profit and 
 solace it could be forced to yield. 
 
 She held that the certainty of speedy ex- 
 tinction should not be suffered to chill the 
 nobler activities of the mind, or to render 
 its culture of too little moment to be stren- 
 uously sought. The new world of abstract 
 thought into which such culture leads, the 
 keen discernment of natural phenomena 
 which it confers, should be valued as sup- 
 plying sources of passing interest to beguile 
 the hapless soul. An observant eye, that 
 finds pleasure in following the shifting 
 curves of a torrent's descending flood, or in 
 noting the wandering shadows upon a moun- 
 tain's distant slope ; an ear attuned to the 
 deep accord of storm -swept billows, must 
 forget for a while, in the contemplation of 
 their beauty and grandeur, the inexorable 
 Fate standing grimly silent by the pathway. 
 In the presence of such wondrous evolu- 
 tions of blind and restless power, the ob- 
 server will deem himself fortunate to have 
 
Her Religion of Humanity. 157 
 
 surprised the master-forces of nature in some 
 of their grandest workings — ■ to have wit- 
 nessed glorious visions that were never 
 framed for eye to see, and to have heard 
 majestic harmonies that were awakened by 
 no intelHgent touch, and are modulated to 
 no listening ear. Of deeper meaning, of 
 spiritual import, these visions and this mu- 
 sic had, for her, no message to convey. 
 
 The interest she felt in whatever could 
 elevate the race found its most earnest ex- 
 pression in endeavors to advance the high- 
 er education of her sex. The effort started 
 in England, during the later years of her 
 life, to secure to the women of the future 
 that continuous disciplinary training and 
 liberal culture which the heroines of her 
 books had necessarily lacked, found in her 
 a cordial sympathizer; and from the prof- 
 its of her first novel a generous sum went 
 towards the establishment of Girton Col- 
 lege, at Cambridge. There, as well as at 
 the other colleges that were soon opened to 
 
158 Her Religion of Humanity. 
 
 women, she was rejoiced to know that hap- 
 pier Maggies and Dorotheas than her fancy 
 drew were able to gain the wealth of knowl- 
 edge that their young minds craved. 
 
 It has already been seen that, beyond the 
 serene consciousness of doing right, which 
 the disciples of such a faith as George El- 
 iot's would hope to possess — but which 
 hardly seems to have been vouchsafed as 
 her own reward — little personal advantage 
 was to be derived from their exertions to 
 promote the welfare of men. The longing 
 for immortality, which seems an instinctive 
 aspiration of the human soul, might hope, it 
 is true, for a certain faint continuance of 
 individual effort after death. To do some- 
 thing towards lessening the sum of human 
 sorrow to-day would be to do something 
 towards lessening it hereafter; since the 
 future must inherit the good influences of 
 the present, and pass them on to affect a 
 still more distant future. And, according to 
 George Eliot's thinking, to "join the choir 
 
Her Religion of Humanity. 159 
 
 invisible " was merely to become such a dif- 
 fusive, impersonal voice among the perma- 
 nent and ennobling influences of the race. 
 
 It is manifestly true, however, that less 
 generous spirits than her own, less enlight- 
 ened minds, would find such a belief as this 
 not only inadequate to console them for 
 life's sorrows, but powerless to restrain them 
 from evil and to incite them to good. With 
 faith in God, and in the retributions and 
 compensations of a future existence stricken 
 from their creed, the sense of moral obli- 
 gation would inevitably tend to disappear. 
 Convinced that others, like themselves, have 
 only this brief life to live, and that no au- 
 thoritative voice from another sphere calls 
 them to self-sacrifice on earth in order to 
 secure a nobler self-indulgence in heaven, 
 the majority of men would deem it the part 
 of wisdom to seize whatever present happi- 
 ness threatened to pass them by. Regard 
 for self would soon destroy their generous 
 regard for each other. 
 
1 60 Her Religion of Humanity. 
 
 If to-morrow we die, George Eliot would 
 say, never to taste of life again, let us pity 
 each other tenderly, and spare each other all 
 we can. This thought could actuate only the 
 noble few. Not to give, but to take, would 
 be the impulse of the selfish many. Let 
 us eat, drink, and be merry, they would ad- 
 vise, for to-morrow we die. 
 
 In such minds, a sense of responsibility to 
 human companions could not long survive 
 the loss of responsibility to their Creator. 
 Where laws of God do not exist, the laws 
 of men must lose their binding force. 
 
 It is evident that the theory of life and 
 morals which George Eliot espoused tends 
 to rob the soul of its noblest attributes — of 
 faith, hope, courage, and joy, of deep rever- 
 ence, fervent gratitude, and serene content. 
 In the light of its teaching, human exist- 
 ence contracts its boundless scope and lofty 
 aims, and sinks belittled to a mere succes- 
 sion of petty deeds. 
 
 It interprets our life on earth as nothing 
 
Her Religion of Humanity. 1 6 1 
 
 better than an idle voyage, sailed amid toss- 
 ing seas and shifting winds, and calling for 
 a fresh set of the sail with every gusty flaw. 
 Yet, with all this careful tacking, no ulti- 
 mate port is kept in view, towards which to 
 bend the vacillating course. 
 
 Or, rather, we might picture it as a seeth- 
 ing caldron, fixed in some dreary waste, and 
 holding within its enclosed void many dark 
 and grewsome ingredients, gathered without 
 knowledge or plan. Only by constant su- 
 pervision and a restless stirring of the con- 
 tents can they be made tolerable to the 
 taste. 
 
 The Hecate who holds herself responsi- 
 ble for the mixture must hover perpetually 
 over the caldron, flinging in, for sweetening 
 and flavor, now a timely smile, then a well- 
 considered sigh, a tear of sympathy, or a 
 sustaining word, and seeing that these strike 
 the whirling surface at just the right mo- 
 ment and the best angle, or her fondest la- 
 bors will have been worse than vain. With 
 ir 
 
1 62 Her Religion of Humanity. 
 
 all her solicitous care, the best she can hope 
 for is that some vagrant whiff of air will ex- 
 tinguish forever the wavering flame beneath. 
 Compare with this that other view of hu- 
 man life which regards it as the sustained 
 flight of a heaven-sent carrier dove, winging 
 its way on strong pinions from one celestial 
 point to another through the atmosphere of 
 earth, and meeting, in its course, not only 
 the murky cloud and deadly thunderbolt, 
 but the kindly beams and rosy splendors of 
 beneficent day, the keen radiance of clus- 
 tered stars, pale, mellow light from waning 
 moons, the perfume of soft breezes, the swift, 
 wild turbulence of the blast. It is content 
 merely to breathe and to soar, finding rapt- 
 ure in the glad activities of life ; free to range 
 the ether, to dive through the bosom of the 
 cloud, or drop to the fertile plain beneath ; 
 yet still mindful of the message it bears 
 upon its breast, whose divine import it has 
 no power to guess ; and drawn ever onward, 
 by resistless influences, towards the heaven- 
 
Her Religion of Humanity. 163 
 
 ly goal for which it started, towards rest 
 and happiness, and the close companion- 
 ship of kindred hearts. Such is the view 
 religion teaches of the life vouchsafed us 
 to live. To pass in thought from her the- 
 ory to this is like emerging from a dark, un- 
 derground tunnel to tread a breezy upland 
 crest. 
 
 More deeply than she pitied mankind 
 must we pity her, that, with a nature so 
 large, gracious, and benevolent, she had not 
 received that added dower of faith in the 
 unseen which has been the common heri- 
 tage of men, whether their faith be Protes- 
 tant, Catholic, Mahommedan, or Buddhist, 
 and which has been especially strong in the 
 souls of the greatest of the race. This faith 
 would have given to her endeavors the cheer- 
 ing assurance that, if she wrought for those 
 who sorely needed help, she wrought in 
 unison with mighty allies, unconquerable 
 forces, under whose marshalling the myriad 
 human souls for whom she sorrowed so 
 
1 64 Her Religion of Humanity. 
 
 keenly were moving straight onward, 
 through seeming failure, to lasting victory 
 and peace. 
 
 Her religion — if such it could be called — 
 was a religion of humanity, which strove for 
 humanity's sake alone. The Christianity 
 of to-day has, also, its religion of humanity, 
 founded, like hers, upon a generous desire 
 to benefit mankind ; and, like hers, seeking 
 to substitute, for ceremonial rights and end- 
 less hymns in praise of divine attributes, 
 deeds of charity to suffering mortals. It 
 would seek to promote their highest welfare 
 by improving their material surroundings, 
 enhghtening their minds, and training their 
 moral sense; believing that whatever re- 
 tards the full development of the physical, 
 intellectual, or moral nature, starves and 
 hinders the nobler manifestations of the 
 spirit. 
 
 This religion differs from her own in the 
 motive which inspires the work. A pro- 
 found sympathy for mankind was the stimu- 
 
Her Religion of Humanity. 165 
 
 lus of her endeavor. To this the Christian 
 philanthropist adds a profound sympathy 
 with God. 
 
 He regards the human race as created 
 by an omniscient and benevolent Being — a 
 Being still existing as an active controlling 
 force throughout the universe, and ever 
 seeking for the firm establishment of justice 
 and truth. Gratitude for his own existence, 
 and for the manifold blessings that attend 
 it, joined with an instinctive sense that he 
 ought always to do what he can towards fur- 
 thering the right, awakens within his soul a 
 desire to aid in promoting the lasting wel- 
 fare of the race. To the love which springs 
 from brotherhood he adds the love towards 
 a common Father which gratitude awakens 
 in his heart. Thus, not only duty to fellow- 
 men, but duty to God, calls him to unselfish 
 labors for the general good. 
 
 Such a philanthropist would elevate man- 
 kind, not merely because this life is of the ut- 
 most importance while it lasts, but because 
 
1 66 Her Religion of Humanity. 
 
 it is the prelude to a larger and fuller life be- 
 yond, which, beginning here, lengthens out 
 in one continuous existence through infinite 
 reaches of time. Whatever influences en- 
 noble it here ennoble it for eternity ; what- 
 ever cramps or debases it lessens the hap- 
 piness of an endless future. The spiritual 
 needs of men while upon earth demand the 
 tenderest ministries that the philanthropist 
 can give ; but he labors with increased zeal 
 when he reflects that long after the present 
 life has closed, the results of his ministries 
 will perpetuate themselves in another sphere 
 of being. 
 
 Equally with George Eliot would he sym- 
 pathize with pain and sorrow ; but to him 
 they are but temporary accidents, and may 
 be blessings in dark disguise. He sees that 
 the good, even now, outweighs the seeming 
 evil, and that the latter tends constantly 
 to diminish before the growing supremacy 
 of right. To his hopeful vision, the darkest 
 path is spanned by rainbow arches ; and 
 
Her Religion of Humanity. 167 
 
 over the dreariest rain-sodden plain stretch 
 skies of radiant beauty, heralding a happier 
 dawn. 
 
 The wonders of the material world gain 
 for him an added interest when, throughout 
 their infinite complexity, he discerns the be- 
 nevolent designs of one supreme creative 
 mind. The quick play of color upon a 
 bird's lustrous breast, the varied tints and 
 curves of a flower's glossy petal, are the 
 more welcome to his gaze since, in their 
 adaptation to the human eye, he finds evi- 
 dence of a divine intention that man should 
 enjoy their charms. 
 
 With a faith like this — which, happily, is 
 the almost universal possession of mankind 
 — to live now in this bright and beautiful 
 world is a delight. And to live hereafter, 
 in some realm or sphere unknown to us to- 
 day, is never to pass beyond the sway of 
 that kindly Power which has called us into 
 being and blessed us from our birth. Wheth- 
 er this Power will reward us, in that later 
 
1 68 Her Religion of Humanity. 
 
 existence, for any steadfastness or endeavor 
 upon earth, we cannot know, and should not 
 greatly care. But, at least, we may hope 
 that it will not reserve a heavier punish- 
 ment for our sins than their results have al- 
 ready brought. And it is our fond belief 
 that we are to pass to higher and better la- 
 bors, where there shall be less of temptation 
 to retard, and more of strength to sustain. 
 
 Leaving out of view altogether the ques- 
 tion whether such a belief in God and a 
 future life is well grounded or not — wheth- 
 er the weight of argument be on the side 
 of George Eliot's scientific atheism or of 
 the old religious faith, and considering the 
 creed of ordinary men and women simply 
 as an adaptation to human needs, as a re- 
 straining and sustaining force, however orig- 
 inated and upheld — we cannot but conclude 
 that the human race would be infinitely im- 
 poverished if truth compelled it to surren- 
 der its long-cherished trust in divine protec- 
 tion and an immortal life. 
 
Her Religion of Humanity. 169 
 
 For the brave and dreary resignations of 
 George Eliot's creed, who would willingly 
 part with the serene confidence and bound- 
 less hope which a positive spiritual faith 
 has given to mankind ? We have but to 
 reflect how much of the deepest happi- 
 ness of the soul, of its fortitude in time of 
 trial, and patient repose in the stress of dis- 
 aster, is born of a real, abiding belief in an 
 intelligent, benignant Power above and out- 
 side ourselves ; a Power able to create the 
 teeming life of a universe, and to remain 
 cognizant of all that the universe holds, 
 from the great, fiery sun, that warms and 
 lights a dozen circling planets, to the tiniest 
 new-born insect, screened from its beams 
 under a dew-laden leaf — a Being, too, who 
 stands ever for truth and justice, and who, 
 wishing us also to serve and uphold them, 
 has given to us not only a monitory voice 
 to define our rightful course, but a strange 
 sense of obligation to follow forever the 
 srood and to forsake the evil. For rever- 
 
1 70 Her Religion of Humanity. 
 
 ent trust in such a wise, beneficent, and 
 powerful Ruler, able in the end to accom- 
 plish what he seeks, we should lament the 
 speculative wisdom that would doom us to 
 a hopeless groping along thorny paths, to 
 downcast glances and faltering steps, with 
 none to soothe and comfort save friends as 
 blind and impotent as ourselves. 
 
IX. 
 THE NOVELIST OF THE FUTURE. 
 
IX. 
 
 No failure of her heroines, however uni- 
 versal and depressing, can outweigh in in- 
 fluence George Eliot's own successes in the 
 life-work she undertook. Her commanding 
 position among the novelists of her time 
 renders her the harbinger among women 
 of that eminent achievement in the world 
 of letters which is destined to follow a thor- 
 ough and liberal training of their native 
 gifts. 
 
 But, although greater writers may here- 
 after appear in the domain of fiction, their 
 most brilliant portrayals of the society 
 around them can never supersede the pict- 
 ures she has given to the world. Her 
 novels will possess a permanent value, not 
 only as Hterary masterpieces, but as glow- 
 
1 74 The Novelist of the Future. 
 
 ing transcripts of such phases of woman's 
 advancement as belong to the history of our 
 century. In their profound study of that 
 social and intellectual progress which the 
 author was privileged to see, they will serve 
 as a more vivid illustration of the develop- 
 ment of woman's mind than any mere his- 
 torian could supply. 
 
 But while the future will honor her im- 
 perishable work, and the transcendent pow- 
 ers she brought to its accomplishment, it 
 cannot fail, from the standpoint of distance, 
 to recognize, also, the limitations of her 
 view. It will perceive that her interpreta- 
 tion of human life stopped short of the ut- 
 most truth ; since a lack of spiritual insight 
 blinded her vision to the limitless outcomes 
 of endeavor, the final adjustments of time. 
 Her penetrative glance, which no visible 
 atom could escape, will appear then too 
 weak to have discerned, below the material 
 surface, those stable foundations upon which 
 the universe rests in eternal poise ; too sadly 
 
The Novelist of the Future. 1 75 
 
 downcast to have turned from the passing 
 shadows at her feet to behold the clear sun- 
 light of heaven. 
 
 If fiction is ever to acknowledge a Shake- 
 speare among its creative minds ; if, like the 
 drama, it is to possess the one supreme mas- 
 ter to whom no gifts have been denied, it 
 will be when a greater than George Eliot 
 shall arise, equipped not only with her ob- 
 servant glance and strong imaginative pow- 
 er, her sympathetic understanding and phil- 
 osophic thought, but, in addition to these, 
 with that intensity of feeling and pure in- 
 tegrity of moral standards which Charlotte 
 Bronte reveals, joined with the full flow 
 of generous emotion which distinguishes 
 George Sand. 
 
 Like her gifted predecessor — for we may 
 be pardoned the use of a feminine pronoun 
 here — this greater novelist will recognize 
 the potency of creeds in determining con- 
 duct, and the inevitable sequence of cause 
 and effect in the actions of men; but her 
 
176 The Novelist of the Future. 
 
 beliefs will include a faith in the unseen 
 world, in the immortality of mind as sepa- 
 rable from matter, and of mind as control- 
 ling matter ; and though her world will rest 
 no less upon universal law, it will be a law 
 which embodies the justice and benevolence 
 of one supreme and guiding Mind, who is 
 the central source of all law. 
 
 From the fictitious scenes upon her pages 
 her gifted sisters will gather inspiration and 
 hope, to quicken all their brave endeavors 
 after good. For she will picture their ad- 
 vancing life, not as a gloomy valley, into 
 which their pathways must descend through 
 ever-deepening shades, till existence closes 
 in endless night, but as a broadening up- 
 land, along whose sweet ascents they are 
 summoned to pass, with bounding step and 
 uplifted gaze. 
 
 The heroines of her fancy will succeed in 
 acquiring the highest culture of the schools ; 
 and in the world they enter shall be found 
 those strong and faithful companionships 
 
The Novelist of the Future. 177 
 
 which fortify the soul and make a pleasure 
 of continued toil. When thus pursued, the 
 alluring ideals of youth will hover nearer 
 and nearer, till at length they pass into the 
 fixed and glorious realities of age. 
 
 In the serene and happy households which 
 love and intelligence shall hereafter build, 
 these noble heroines will find opportunities 
 to labor, not merely for their own highest 
 good, but for that of fellow-mortals whose 
 grateful faces they may never see. 
 
 Such will be the future which present in- 
 fluences are preparing for those who come 
 after us; such must be the picture which its 
 copyist will portray. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 12 
 
GEORGE ELIOT'S LIFE AND WORKS. 
 
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 ESSAYS AND LEAVES FROM A NOTE- 
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 FELIX HOLT, THE RADICAL. Illus- 
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 GEORGE ELIOT'S LIFE. By J.W. Cnoss. 
 With Portraits and Illustrations. 3 vols. 
 
 MIDDLEMARCH. 2 vols. 
 
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 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE, AND SI- 
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 THE IMPRESSIONS OF THEOPHRAS- 
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 POPULAR EDITION. 
 
 15 vols,, 12mo, Cloth, 75 cents per vol. 
 
 ADAM BEDE. Illustrated. 
 
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 ESSAYS AND LEAVES FROM A NOTE- 
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 FELIX HOLT, THE RADICAL. Illus- 
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 GEORGE ELIOT'S LIFE. By J. W. Ceoss. 
 With Portraits and Illustrations. 3 vols. 
 
 ■MIDDLEMARCH. 2 vols. 
 
 POEMS. 
 
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 TUS SUCH. 
 
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 $7 50 per Set. (Sold only in Sets.) 
 
 "With Three Illustrations. 3 vols.. 4to, 
 
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 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 8vo, 60 cents. 
 
 Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, New York. 
 
 ' Hakper & Bhoteebs wiU send any of the above works by mail, postage prepaid, to any pari of i,h« 
 United States or Canada, on receipt of the price. 
 
GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 GEORGE ELIOT'S LIFE, Related in her Letters 
 and Journals. A New and Enlarged Edition. Ar- 
 ranged and Edited by her Husband, J. W. Cross. 
 Portraits and Illustrations. In Three Volumes, 
 pp. 1038. i2mo, Cloth, $3 75. (Uniform with 
 " Harper's Library Edition " of George Eliot's 
 Works.) Also 4to, Paper, 45 cents. 
 
 Mr. Cross has made known what is in fact the last work of 
 the great Englishwoman. He possesses that art of concealing 
 the artist which is still the rarest quality of biographers. We 
 see the heroine not reflected from other minds, but nearly as she 
 saw herself and cared to be known. Her own skilled hand has 
 drawn her likeness. . . . There are few works in literature whose 
 influence is so ennobling. — The Right Honorable Lord Acton, 
 in the Nineteenth Century. 
 
 If a reader should open these volumes with the eagerness of 
 literary curiosity, when he has advanced but a little way that 
 feeling will be quelled by the stronger one of the joy of living 
 for a while in company with large and generous ardors, tender 
 affections, and great and solemn thoughts. . . . We see the sen- 
 sitive, fragile, trembling hand which reached forth to us so large 
 a gift, and our gain of possession is purified by the gain of grati- 
 tude. — Academy^ London. 
 
 A precious addition to the substantive and lasting literature 
 of the century. ... It will rank with the soundest and the ripest 
 products of George Eliot's mind, with the most illuminative and 
 inspiring of her published writings. — N.Y.Sun. 
 
 This very remarkable book is less a " Life " than an autobiog- 
 raphy. Mr. Cross has shown excellent judgment in availing him- 
 self of a rare and exceptional wealth of material to illustrate 
 George Eliot's character and career by elaborate self-revelations. 
 —N. Y. Titnes. 
 
 As a specimen of biographical writing, nothing finer than these 
 volumes has ever been given to the public. They will serve 
 as a model for future writers in this line. The life has been 
 allowed to write itself from her letters and journals, free from 
 the obtrusion of any mind but her own. — Christian at Work, N. Y. 
 
 Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, New York. 
 
 i" Tke above work sent by maiU postage prepaid, to any pari of the United 
 States or Canada, on receipt of tke price. 
 
MADAME DE STAEL. 
 
 Madame De Stael : a Study of her Life and Times. 
 The First Revolution and the First Empire. By 
 Abel Stevens, LL.D. With Two Steel Portraits. 
 Two Volumes. i2mo, Cloth, $3 00. 
 
 Dr. Stevens has had admirable opportunities of completing a 
 work which should prove an incalculable addition to the literature 
 of biography. We think that he has succeeded. — Buffalo Express. 
 
 The book is a relief from the analyzing, critical tone of some 
 recent biographies which attempt to exalt the writer above his 
 subject. The work is very full, is carefully edited, is apprecia- 
 tive but not often extravagant, and is well written. . . . The best 
 life yet written of Madame de Stael. — Utica Herald. 
 
 Dr. Stevens is sure of readers for anything he writes, but his- 
 present theme, as well as its fascinating treatment, will secure 
 him a wider public, if that be possible, than he has known. He 
 has the advantage of delving in comparatively new ground ; for, 
 though Madame de Stael was a mighty force in her time, nothing 
 like an adequate biography of her has existed. . . . Nowhere 
 else will be found an equal portrait of that wonderful mind, which 
 treated with like ability and leadership the diverse subjects of 
 ethics, politics, philosophy, and criticism, and, in the midst of all, 
 found time to be a social queen. ... A troop of great figures 
 cross the scene — Napoleon, Necker, Chateaubriand, Madame 
 Recamier, Goethe, Schiller, Madame de Krudener, Byron, Ben- 
 jamin Constant, are all here, and instinct with life. . . . We con- 
 gratulate Dr. Stevens on the completion of a work which will 
 heighten his fame, while it adds to the world's treasury of knowl- 
 edge and intellectual delight. — Christian Advocate, N. Y. 
 
 Dr. Stevens has prepared the fullest and most sympathetic bi- 
 ography of Madame de Stael which has yet appeared. Several 
 recent biographies have been critised because their contents were 
 not condensed into one volume. So bright, pertinent, and in- 
 teresting are these chapters that we would be at a loss to choose 
 which we would spare, if it were not practicable to have them all. 
 They form a narrative full of light, strength, and moral inspira- 
 tion, shining in the midst of clouds and darkness, shame and 
 confusion, blood and brutality, supreme selfishness and dazzling 
 power. — Observer, N. Y. 
 
 Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, New York. 
 
 8^" The above work setit by ma.il, postage prepaid, to any pari of the United 
 States or Canada, on receipt of the price. 
 
MADAME DE REMUSAT. 
 
 MEMOIRS OF MADAME DE REMUSAT. 1802- 
 1808. Edited, with a Preface and Notes, by her 
 Grandson, Paul de R^musat, Senator. Part I., 
 4to, Paper, 10 cents. Part II., 4to, Paper, lo cents. 
 Part III., Illustrated, 4to, Paper, 10 cents. 
 
 In these very entertaining and gossipy memoirs we have the 
 unstudied and true character of Napoleon, of Josephine, and of 
 the Napoleonic family. — Zion's Herald, Boston. 
 
 No romance could exceed these charming pages of history in 
 interest. — Boston Sunday Budget. 
 
 This fascinating book, which is to all intents and purposes a 
 disillusionizing of Napoleon, is written with such an obvious sin- 
 cerity of purpose and with such grace of style, that it at once con- 
 vinces and attracts. — N. Y. Commercial Advertiser. 
 
 Perhaps no historical work of the day has excited more interest 
 and criticism than this laying open of the inner life of Napoleon. 
 . . . Brilliant with entertaining anecdotes of noted people, and 
 freely illustrated with the likeness of Bonaparte's contemporaries. 
 — San Francisco Post. 
 
 LETTERS OF MADAME DE r:6mUSAT TO 
 HER HUSBAND AND SON. From 1804 to 
 1813. 4to, Paper, 20 cents. 
 
 Full of details and pictures of life as she saw it, and sketches of 
 persons, and quiet reflections. She writes with a guarded vivacity, 
 as though it were possible for her notes to fall into other hands. 
 Yet the volume is full of interest. — Christian at Work, N. Y. 
 
 Curious and interesting for the light they cast on the writer's 
 personality and on the imperial court. — N. V. Sun. 
 
 It is not too much to say that these letters possess sufficient 
 charm of style and thought and importance of anecdote and inci- 
 dent to entitle them to a generous reception, even if the " Me- 
 moirs " had never been written. — yV. Y. Tribune. 
 
 They give a graphic description of the French court and the 
 more prominent characters figuring in it during the time of the 
 First Napoleon. Those who have had the good-fortune to read 
 the "Memoirs" will greet with pleasure the appearance of the 
 " Letters." — San Francisco Bulletin. 
 
 Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, Nevvt York. 
 
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MARY RUSSELL MITFORD. 
 
 THE LIFE OF MARY RUSSELL MITFORD, 
 told by Herself in Letters to her Friends. With 
 Anecdotes and Sketches of her most Celebrated 
 Contemporaries. Edited by the Rev. A. G. K. 
 L'EsTRANGE. 2 vols., i2mo, Cloth, $2 50. 
 
 These letters illustrate art and literature of the day for fifty 
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 and traits of distinguished people. — Saturday Kiview, London. 
 
 Miss Mitford possessed the knack of catching a likeness very 
 happily in a few lines. She could tell or repeat a story pithily, 
 and her letters are full of shrewdly sketched portraiture and well- 
 told anecdote. . . . These volumes are especially interesting. — 
 London Times. 
 
 RECOLLECTIONS OF A LITERARY LIFE : Or, 
 Books, Places, and People. By Mary Russell 
 Mitford. i2mo. Cloth, $1 50. 
 
 OUR VILLAGE. Sketches of Rural Character and 
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 sonal relations of literary men and women, and of English socie- 
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 server, Philadelphia. 
 
 Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, New York. 
 
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MRS. CARLYLE'S LETTERS. 
 
 LETTERS AND MEMORIALS OF JANE WELSH 
 CARLYLE. Prepared for Publication by Thomas 
 Carlyle. Edited by James Anthony Froude. 
 i2mo, Cloth, $1 go; 4to, Paper, 30 cents. 
 
 It is an extremely painful — we may say a truly tragic— story 
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 like it in all literary history. It fortunately has, along with the 
 dark side, a side that is bright. Carlyle, it is clearly enough 
 shown, did love his wife — was never wanting in tenderest regard 
 for her ; and when the truth of his own blindness came home to 
 him in her death, his remorse was unspeakably great, and past 
 all consolation. If there ever was a genliine tragedy in the pri- 
 vate life of any man and woman in this world, there was one in 
 the life of the Carlyles.— iV. K Times. 
 
 Mrs. Carlyle's letters will have a fascinating interest for readers 
 of all grades of intelligence. — M Y. Tribune. 
 
 The collection and preparation of these letters was made by 
 Mr. Carlyle himself, who enriched them with full notes and rec- 
 ollections on points of all kinds. Whatever questions may arise 
 as to the publication, the notes and letters are immensely enter- 
 taining. — Independent, N. Y. 
 
 No letters of recent times will be more eagerly sought for or 
 more widely read. She had a woman's gift for letter-writing, and 
 her peculiar domestic experiences were relieved by abundant cor- 
 respondence. Her " Reminiscences " and these " Letters " ought 
 to be read together, and a very vivid impression will result of two 
 lives tremendously strong in human strength, but without the 
 sweetness, graciousness, and patience of Christian trust. — Chris- 
 tian Advocate, N. Y. 
 
 They bring us into connection with the chief literary person- 
 ages of the period. They are very readable and enjoyable. — 
 Christian Witness, Boston, 
 
 These letters testify to the strong mental gifts of the writer, 
 and indicate that her literary acumen was little inferior to that 
 of the great Chelsea Sage himself These letters of his devoted 
 and sympathetic and self-denying wife, have an interest of their 
 own quite apart from and independent of the prestige which they 
 derive from her husband's fame. — Troy Telegram, N. Y. 
 
 Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, New York. 
 
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