(This post was written as part of a university assignment last term. Thought I'd put it here too.
I'm actually studying The Mill on the Floss at the moment, and the secondary reading I've been doing has thrown up even more I could've talked about here. Which has taught me that maybe there is never really a complete conclusion, a full stop, an end to the debate.
I was going to get rid of all the academic referencing, but figured there might be somebody out there who wants to read the readings behind the post. The Zadie Smith essays are a lovely place to start.)
I'm actually studying The Mill on the Floss at the moment, and the secondary reading I've been doing has thrown up even more I could've talked about here. Which has taught me that maybe there is never really a complete conclusion, a full stop, an end to the debate.
I was going to get rid of all the academic referencing, but figured there might be somebody out there who wants to read the readings behind the post. The Zadie Smith essays are a lovely place to start.)
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| image source: http://etc.usf.edu/clipart/7500/7582/eliot_7582.htm |
George Eliot was no looker. Or so we’re routinely reminded,
by sources as great as Henry James (1) who described her as ‘magnificently ugly
- deliciously hideous’, and as dubious as Wikipedia (2) which mentions her ‘ill-favoured
appearance’. But, as James (1) continued, ‘in this vast ugliness resides a most
powerful beauty ... yes, behold me in love with this great horse-faced
bluestocking’. Note the word ‘powerful’. Just as Eliot’s lack of feminine charm
as a successful female novelist challenged the social norms, so too did her
writing. Her work steered away from what she termed the ‘mind-and-millinery’ (3) saturating women’s writing at the time, and instead concentrated on serious
political and social issues, consequently broadening the world of English
Literature to include more high calibre female writers.
In 1856, whilst editor of the liberal quarterly publication
The Westminster Review, Eliot contributed an article titled Silly Novels by
Lady Novelists. The article – just as amusing, sharp and, arguably, pertinent
today – mocks the triviality and pseudo-intellectualism of contemporary female
writing, arguing that the ‘particular quality of silliness that predominates’ (3)
suggests ‘the average nature of women is too shallow and feeble a soil to bear
much tillage’ (3). This unfair representation of the female intellect was
something Eliot worked hard to change through her own novel writing. Her
well-informed focus on ordinary people, social outsiders and close detail of
rural life in stories such as The Mill on the Floss and Middlemarch tackled
wider political and social issues of the time. Born Mary Ann Evans, her pen
name George Eliot maintained, as Sanders (5: p.448) states, a ‘public
distinction between a highly moral narrator and a woman who, according to the
narrow standards of her time, was an outcast, an adulteress and a religious
sceptic’, ensuring she was one of the first female novelists to win respect ‘on
the merits of her work alone’.
But why was George Eliot considered an outcast and an
adulteress by her contemporaries? Well, she was a ‘woman journalist’ (6) who was
virtually running The Westminster Review, a very unusual role for a woman to be
in at that time; she was ‘notoriously living ‘in sin’' (6) with married man
George Henry Lewes; she’d all but rejected her Christianity. Yet clearly this
social dissent did not prevent Eliot from becoming one of the most important
novelists of the Victorian era. In fact by following her ambition and achieving
success from such a position, Eliot confronted the prevailing patriarchal attitude
of the age. Virginia Woolf (7) put it better than me when she implored readers to
always remember ‘all that she [Eliot] dared and achieved, how with every
obstacle against her - sex and health and convention - she sought more
knowledge and more freedom’. Eliot’s work, which dealt with ‘the slavery of
being a girl’ (8: p.541), kept up ‘a constant effort to hold high the torch in
the dusky spaces of man’s conscience’ (9), gradually directing the light
towards feminist issues which came to the fore in the following century. By proving
women were worthy of an education and could have just as significant an impact
on literature as men, Eliot’s success, furthering the achievements of Jane
Austen and Elizabeth Gaskell, influenced some of the great female writers of
the future, including Emily Dickinson, Virginia Woolf and more recently Zadie
Smith.
It goes without saying that the changes Eliot’s writing
brought about in English Literature (both as an art form and an academic
discipline) are still being felt today. She has helped provide a voice for a
new, discerning, female breed of writer. She has contributed greatly towards
establishing and advancing the novel as a key form of literature. ‘What
twenty-first-century novelists inherit from Eliot,’ writes Smith (10: p.40) in
her essay Middlemarch and Everybody, ‘is the radical freedom to push the
novel’s form to its limits, wherever they may be’. Maybe it can be argued that
Eliot’s subjects of ordinary folk and rural life aren’t as thrilling as the
turbulent romance of Heathcliff and Kathy – maybe Eliot’s significance in
English Literature isn’t as obvious or as exciting as we’d like - but it
doesn’t matter. Her power lies elsewhere. As AS Byatt (11) says, ‘the truth is
that she is wise - not only intelligent, but wise. Her voice deepens our
response to her world.’
It’s worth noting that whilst doing the research for this
blog post, my research relating to Eliot’s physical appearance brought up more
material than my research regarding her significance in English Literature did.
Perhaps George Eliot still has work to do.
Works Cited
1.
Tóibín, C. Creating ‘The Portrait of a Lady’.
New York Review of Books. [Internet.] 2007. [Accessed October 22 2014]; 54
(12). Available from: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2007/jul/19/creating-the-portrait-of-a-lady/
2.
Wikipedia. George Eliot [Internet]. October 21
2014. [Accessed October 21 2014]; Available from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Eliot
3.
Eliot, G. Silly Novels by Lady Novelists. The
Westminster Review. [Internet.] 1856. [Accessed October 22 2014.]; 66: 442-461.
Available from: http://www.bl.uk/collection-items/silly-novels-by-lady-novelists-essay-by-george-eliot
4.
The Guardian. Daniel Deronda: a Victorian novel
that’s still controversial [Internet]. February 10 2009. [Accessed October 28
2014.]; Available from: http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2009/feb/10/zionism-deronda-george-eliot
5.
Sanders, A. The Short Oxford History of English
Literature. 3rd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 2004.
6.
Hughes, K. The mystery of Amos Barton. The
Guardian. [Internet.] January 6 2007. [Accessed October 21 2014.] Available
from: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2007/jan/06/fiction.georgeeliot
7.
Woolf, V. George Eliot. The Times Literary
Supplement. [Internet.] November 20
1919 [Accessed October 21 2014.] Available from: http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/woolf/VW-Eliot.html
8.
Eliot, G. Daniel Deronda. Oxford: Oxford
Paperbacks; 2009.
9.
James, H. George Eliot’s Life. Atlantic Monthly.
[Internet.] 1855. [Accessed October 21 2014]; 55 (331): 677. Available from: http://ebooks.library.cornell.edu/a/atla/
10.
Smith, Z. Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays.
London: Penguin Books; 2011.
11.
Byatt, AS. Wit and wisdom. The Guardian.
[Internet.] August 4 2007. [Accessed October 21 2014.] Available from: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2007/aug/04/fiction.asbyatt
