Mary Anne Evans (1819-1880), better known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist. She was one of the leading writers of the Victorian era. Her novels, largely set in provincial England, are well known for their realism and psychological perspicacity. Female authors published freely under their own names, but Eliot wanted to ensure that she was not seen as merely a writer of romances. An additional factor may have been a desire to shield her private life from public scrutiny and to prevent scandals attending her relationship with the married George Henry Lewes. Her first major literary work was the translation of David Strauss' Life of Jesus (1846). In 1857 The Sad Fortunes of the Reverend Amos Barton, the first of the Scenes of Clerical Life, was published in Blackwood's Magazine and, along with the other Scenes, was well received. Her first complete novel, published in 1859, was Adam Bede and was an instant success. Eliot's most famous work, Middlemarch, was a turning point in the history of the novel.
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Mary Ann Evans, known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist, poet, journalist, translator, and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era. She wrote seven novels: Adam Bede (1859), The Mill on the Floss (1860), Silas Marner (1861), Romola (1862–1863), Felix Holt, the Radical (1866), Middlemarch (1871–1872) and Daniel Deronda (1876). Like Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy, she emerged from provincial England; most of her works are set there. Her works are known for their realism, psychological insight, sense of place and detailed depiction of the countryside. Middlemarch was described by the novelist Virginia Woolf as "one of the few English novels written for grown-up people" and by Martin Amis and Julian Barnes as the greatest novel in the English language.
................................................................................................ ................................................................................................ The Essays of "George Eliot" Complete. ................................................................................................ ................................................................................................ COLLECTED AND ARRANGED, WITH AN INTRODUCTION ON HER “ANALYSIS OF MOTIVES,” by NATHAN SHEPPARD, ................................................................................................ ................................................................................................
George Eliot was prolific at writing, and her essays are far more in number than this collection. Quite a few are neither in this collection nor in Impressions of Theophrastus Such. ................................................................................................ ................................................................................................
CONTENTS.
Preface,
“George Eliot’s” Analysis of Motives,
I.—Carlyle’s Life of Sterling, II.—Woman in France, III.—Evangelical Teaching, IV.—German Wit, V.—Natural History of German Life, VI.—Silly Novels by Lady Novelists, VII.—Worldliness and Other-Worldliness, VIII.—The Influence of Rationalism, IX.—The Grammar of Ornament, X.—Felix Holt’s Address to Workingmen, ................................................................................................ ................................................................................................
"She was associate editor of The Westminster Review from 1851 to 1853." ................................................................................................ ................................................................................................
............................................... ................................................ September 21, 2021 - September 21, 2021. ................................................ ................................................
................................................................................................ ................................................................................................ “George Eliot’s” Analysis of Motives ................................................................................................ ................................................................................................
"George Eliot belongs to and is the greatest of the school of artists in fiction who write fiction as a means to an end, instead of as an end. And, while she certainly is not a story-teller of the first order, considered simply as a story-teller, her novels are a striking illustration of the power of fiction as a means to an end. They remind us, as few other stories do, of the fact that however inferior the story may be considered simply as a story, it is indispensable to the delineation of character. No other form of composition, no discourse, or essay, or series of independent sketches, however successful, could succeed in bringing out character equal to the novel. Herein is at once the justification of the power of fiction. ... "
"Matrimony as a bargain never had and never will have but one result. “She had a root of conscience in her, and the process of purgatory had begun for her on earth.” Without the root of conscience it would have been purgatory all the same. So much for resorting to marriage for deliverance from poverty or old maidhood. Better be an old maid than an old fool. But how are we to be guaranteed against “one of those convulsive motiveless actions by which wretched men and women leap from a temporary sorrow into a lifelong misery?” Rosamond Lydgate says, “Marriage stays with us like a murder.” Yes, if she could only have found that out before instead of after her own marriage!
"But “what greater thing,” exclaims our novelist, “is there for two human souls than to feel that they are joined for life, to strengthen each other in all labor, to minister to each other in all pain, to be one with each other in silent, unspeakable memories at the last parting?” ... "
" ... Equally accurate, and far more impressive, is the narrative of circumstantial evidence gathering against the innocent Lydgate and the guilty Bulstrode—circumstances that will sometimes weave into one tableau of public odium the purest and the blackest characters. From this tableau you may turn to that one in “Adam Bede,” and see how circumstances are made to crush the weak woman and clear the wicked man. And then you can go to “Romola,” or indeed to almost any of these novels, and see how wrong-doing may come of an indulged infirmity of purpose, that unconscious weakness and conscious wickedness may bring about the same disastrous results, and that repentance has no more effect in averting or altering the consequences in one case than the other. Tito’s ruin comes of a feeble, Felix Holt’s victory of an unconquerable, will. Nothing is more characteristic of George Eliot than her tracking of Tito through all the motives and counter motives from which he acted. “Because he tried to slip away from everything that was unpleasant, and cared for nothing so much as his own safety, he came at last to commit such deeds as make a man infamous.” So poor Romola tells her son, as a warning, and adds: “If you make it the rule of your life to escape from what is disagreeable, calamity may come just the same, and it would be calamity falling on a base mind, which is the one form of sorrow that has no balm in it.”"
Romola didn't have children, the author meant Tessa's son.
"Out of this passion for the analysis of motives comes the strong character, slightly gnarled and knotted by natural circumstances, as trees that are twisted and misshapen by storms and floods—or characters gnarled by some interior force working in conjunction with or in opposition to outward circumstances. She draws no monstrosities, or monsters, thus avoiding on the one side romance and on the other burlesque. She keeps to life—the life that fails from “the meanness of opportunity,” or is “dispersed among hindrances” or “wrestles” unavailingly “with universal pressure.”"
"Her style is influenced by her purpose—may be said, indeed, to be created by it. The excellences and the blemishes of the diction come of the end sought to be attained by it. Its subtleties and obscurities were equally inevitable. Analytical thinking takes on an analytical phraseology. It is a striking instance of a mental habit creating a vocabulary. The method of thought produces the form of rhetoric. Some of the sentences are mental landscapes. The meaning seems to be in motion on the page. It is elusive from its very subtlety. ... "
"She does not betray any religious bias in her novels, which is all the more remarkable now that we find it in these essays. Nor is it at all remarkable that this bias is so very easily discovered in the novels by those who have found it in her essays!"
However true the latter three quarter be, the first isn't, unless it's like the U.S. citizens who travel through Europe and find media biased, "unlike American media"!
" ... Is it not one of the “mixed results of revivals” that “some gain a religious vocabulary rather than a religious experience?” Is there a descendant of the Puritans who will not relish the fair play of this? “They might give the name of piety to much that was only Puritanic egoism; they might call many things sin that were not sin, but they had at least the feeling that sin was to be avoided and resisted, and color-blindness, which may mistake drab for scarlet, is better than total blindness, which sees no distinction of color at all.” Is not Adam Bede justified in saying that “to hear some preachers you’d think a man must be doing nothing all his life but shutting his eyes and looking at what’s going on in the inside of him,” or that “the doctrines are like finding names for your feelings so that you can talk of them when you’ve never known them?” ... "
"There is nothing of the spirit of “served him right,” or “just what she deserved,” or “they ought to have known better,” in George Eliot. That is not in her line."
Did this author read through Impressions of Theophrastus Such? ................................................................................................ ................................................................................................
............................................... ................................................ September 21, 2021 - September 21, 2021. ................................................ ................................................
................................................................................................ ................................................................................................ I.—Carlyle’s Life of Sterling CARLYLE’S LIFE OF STERLING. ................................................................................................ ................................................................................................
"As soon as the closing of the Great Exhibition afforded a reasonable hope that there would once more be a reading public, “The Life of Sterling” appeared. A new work by Carlyle must always be among the literary births eagerly chronicled by the journals and greeted by the public. In a book of such parentage we care less about the subject than about its treatment, just as we think the “Portrait of a Lord” worth studying if it come from the pencil of a Vandyck. The life of John Sterling, however, has intrinsic interest, even if it be viewed simply as the struggle of a restless aspiring soul, yearning to leave a distinct impress of itself on the spiritual development of humanity, with that fell disease which, with a refinement of torture, heightens the susceptibility and activity of the faculties, while it undermines their creative force. Sterling, moreover, was a man thoroughly in earnest, to whom poetry and philosophy were not merely another form of paper currency or a ladder to fame, but an end in themselves—one of those finer spirits with whom, amid the jar and hubbub of our daily life,
“The melodies abide "Of the everlasting chime.”
"But his intellect was active and rapid, rather than powerful, and in all his writings we feel the want of a stronger electric current to give that vigor of conception and felicity of expression, by which we distinguish the undefinable something called genius; while his moral nature, though refined and elevated, seems to have been subordinate to his intellectual tendencies and social qualities, and to have had itself little determining influence on his life."
" ... We have often wished that genius would incline itself more frequently to the task of the biographer—that when some great or good personage dies, instead of the dreary three or five volumed compilations of letter, and diary, and detail, little to the purpose, which two thirds of the reading public have not the chance, nor the other third the inclination, to read, we could have a real “Life,” setting forth briefly and vividly the man’s inward and outward struggles, aims, and achievements, so as to make clear the meaning which his experience has for his fellows. A few such lives (chiefly, indeed, autobiographies) the world possesses, and they have, perhaps, been more influential on the formation of character than any other kind of reading. But the conditions required for the perfection of life writing—personal intimacy, a loving and poetic nature which sees the beauty and the depth of familiar things, and the artistic power which seizes characteristic points and renders them with lifelike effect—are seldom found in combination. “The Life of Sterling” is an instance of this rare conjunction. ... "
"From the period when Carlyle’s own acquaintance with Sterling commenced, the Life has a double interest, from the glimpses it gives us of the writer, as well as of his hero. We are made present at their first introduction to each other; we get a lively idea of their colloquies and walks together, and in this easy way, without any heavy disquisition or narrative, we obtain a clear insight into Sterling’s character and mental progress. Above all, we are gladdened with a perception of the affinity that exists between noble souls, in spite of diversity in ideas—in what Carlyle calls “the logical outcome” of the faculties. ... " ................................................................................................ ................................................................................................ September 21, 2021 - September 21, 2021.
................................................................................................ ................................................................................................ II.—Woman in France WOMAN IN FRANCE: MADAME DE SABLÉ. ................................................................................................ ................................................................................................
Was George Eliot unaware of other good women authors in English literature who were her contemporary or a little prior?
"In 1847, a certain Count Leopold Ferri died at Padua, leaving a library entirely composed of works written by women, in various languages, and this library amounted to nearly 32,000 volumes. We will not hazard any conjecture as to the proportion of these volumes which a severe judge, like the priest in Don Quixote, would deliver to the flames, but for our own part, most of these we should care to rescue would be the works of French women. With a few remarkable exceptions, our own feminine literature is made up of books which could have been better written by men—books which have the same relation to literature is general, as academic prize poems have to poetry: when not a feeble imitation, they are usually an absurd exaggeration of the masculine style, like the swaggering gait of a bad actress in male attire. ... "
Was she unaware of Jane Austen, Bronte sisters?
" ... And to this day, Madame de Sévigné remains the single instance of a woman who is supreme in a class of literature which has engaged the ambition of men; Madame Dacier still reigns the queen of blue stockings, though women have long studied Greek without shame; [33] Madame de Staël’s name still rises first to the lips when we are asked to mention a woman of great intellectual power; Madame Roland is still the unrivalled type of the sagacious and sternly heroic, yet lovable woman; George Sand is the unapproached artist who, to Jean Jacques’ eloquence and deep sense of external nature, unites the clear delineation of character and the tragic depth of passion. ... " ................................................................................................
Published in 1883, this volume includes the various essays written by George Eliot, mostly anonymously in the Westminster Review. They are a testament to her erudition and classical learning. Some of them haven't survived the passage of time very well; others are as fresh and as interesting as the day they were written. The list is as follows: George Eliot's" Analysis of Motives / N. Sheppard -- Carlyle's life of Sterling -- Woman in France: Madame de Sablé -- Evangelical teaching: Dr. Cumming -- German wit: Henry Heine -- Natural history of German life -- Silly novels by lady novelists -- Worldliness & other-worldliness -- The influence of rationalism -- The grammar of ornament -- Felix Holt's address to workingmen. I downloaded my copy at Project Gutenberg https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/28289
Some of the essays are very interesting, I have found topics I did not expect. I really like the essay on the rise of European Women's writing and the introduction to seventeenth Century salon phenomena in France. I also like Eliot's criticism of silly novels by lady novelists, her criticism of evangelical writings and her essay on the German writer, Hein. Eliot is clearly widely read in multiple languages and fields, and I believe she sometimes proves herself, with the soundness of her logic, a better critic than the novelist she is.
Very enjoyable...I particularly liked the Impressions of Theophrastus Such, and the piece on Heinrich Heine. A unique perspective and interesting approach to phrasing...she was definitely a deep thinker, and had a certain way of putting a spin on describing different aspects of human character and behavior that I found intriguing.
I enjoyed reading the varied aspects of the social stratum, the political environments and the religious aspects within the pages of George Eliot's essays.
She definitely was opinionated, and did not falter in expressing her views.
I went into this only planning to read only one essay from this collection: "The Natural History of German Life", as it was mentioned in the introduction to Middlemarch. However, I ended up skipping only one or two essays. Eliot is a great writer. Definitely plan on reading more of her works...