Sand, Charlotte Brontë and Thackeray, show the soundness of George Eliot's
critical judgment. She fully appreciated Jane Austen's artistic skill, as
she did George Sand's impassioned love of liberty and naturalness. She also
saw how tame are Miss Austen's scenes, how humanly imperfect are
Thackeray's characters. Her own work is wanting in Jane Austen's artistic
skill and finish, but there is far more of originality and character in her
books, more of thought and purpose. Miss Austen tells her story wonderfully
well, but her books are all on the same level of social mediocrity and
flatness. No fresh, strong, natural, aspiring life is to be found in one of
them. George Eliot has not Jane Austen's artistic skill, but she has
thought, depth of purpose, originality of expression and conception, and a
marvellous creative insight into character. She is less passionate and bold
than George Sand, not the same daring innovator, more rational and
sensible. She is not so much a poet, has little of George Sand's power of
improvisation, much less of eloquence and abandon. She has more literary
skill than Charlotte Brontë, less originality, but none of her crudeness.
She has not so much of the subtle element of genius, but more of solidity
and thought.
Her theories concerning the novel place George Eliot fully in sympathy with
what may very properly be called the British school of fiction. The natural
history of man is the subject matter used by this school; and to describe
accurately, minutely, some portion of the human race, some social
community, is its main object. Richardson, Fielding, Miss Austen and
Thackeray are the masters in this school, who have given direction to its
aims and methods. They have sought to accomplish in novel-writing somewhat
the same results as those aimed at by Wordsworth and Browning in poetry, to
follow the natural, to make much of the common, to describe things as they
are. They are realists both in method and philosophy, though differing
widely from the minuteness and coarseness of Tourguénief and Zola, in that
they show a large element of the ideal interfused with the real. This
school is seldom coarse, vulgar or sensuous, does not mistake the depraved
and beastly for the natural. Its members delight in simple scenes, plain
life, common joys; the scenes, life and joys which are open to every
Englishman. They have made use of the facts lying immediately about them,
those with which they were the most familiar. They have broken away from
the traditional theories of life, the manners of books of etiquette and the
rules of fashionable society, for the life which is natural and instinct
with impulses of its own. The life of the professions is described, local
dialects and provincialisms appear, places and scenery are carefully
painted, and the disagreeable and painful become elements in these novels,
because common to humanity.
To this special theory of the novel, as it had been worked out by the
English masters of prose-poetry, George Eliot added nothing essential.
Thackeray, Mrs. Gaskell, Miss Austen, Miss Mitford, Fielding and Richardson
had preceded her along the way she was to follow. Their methods became
hers, she accepted their influence, and her work was done in the spirit
they had so ably illustrated. In one direction, however, she far surpassed
any one of her masters, and gave to the novel a richness of power and
fulness of aim it had not attained to with any of her predecessors. George
Eliot combined other methods with that of naturalism, not adhering rigidly
to the purpose of painting life as it appears on the surface. Not only from
the pre-Raphaelites, but from such romanticists as Scott, did she learn
much. Past scenes became natural, and history was discovered to be a vast
element in the thought of the present. Scott's power of reviving the past
in all its romantic and picturesque features, which gave him such capacity
for re-creating the life that had once passed away, was not possessed by
George Eliot. Still, if not a romancist, she realized how mighty is the
shaping power of the past over the present. For this reason, she endeavored
to recast old scenes, to revive in living shapes the times that had gone
by. The living movements of the present, its efforts at reform, its cries
for liberty, its searchings after a freer and purer life, also became a
prominent element in her novels. If in this tendency she somewhat enlarged
upon the methods of her masters, yet she was quite in sympathy with many
who came just before her, and with many more who were her contemporaries.
In another direction she kept along the way followed by many of her
co-workers, and brought philosophy and socialistic speculation to the aid
of the naturalistic method. Indeed, she so far departed from that method,
and from the soundest theories of art, as to become to some extent a
_doctrinaire_.
Her novels, like much of the poetry of the same period, are eclectic in
spirit, combining with the naturalistic methods those of the historic,
socialistic, culture and speculative schools. Art and culture for their own
sake combined in her novels with the purpose to use history and social life
obedient to a distinct conception of their meanings. To describe life
accurately there must be a clear conception of what life means. Genius
never works aimlessly; and in seeing life as it is, always sees that it has
a tendency and direction. A mind so thoughtful as George Eliot's, with so
strong a love of speculative interest in it, was likely to give to
novel-writing done by her a large philosophic element. Yet her philosophy
is nearly always subject to her imagination and to her naturalism. Her love
of nature, her intimate interest in life and its elemental problems, her
passionate sympathy with all human passions and experiences, saves her from
becoming a mere _doctrinaire_, and gives to her speculations a pathetic,
living interest. The poetic elements of her novels are so many as to
subordinate the philosophic to the true purposes of art.
In one direction George Eliot departed from the methods of her
predecessors, and to so great an extent as to be herself the originator of
a new school of fiction. She followed the bent of her time for analysis and
psychologic interpretation. It is here more than anywhere else she differs
from Charlotte Brontë and George Sand. These two great novelists create
character by direct representation, by making their persons live and act.
George Eliot shows her characters to the reader by analyzing their motives
and by giving the history of their development. The disadvantages of the
analytic method are apparent when George Eliot is compared with Scott.
Unique, personal and human are his creations, instinct with all human
emotions, and profoundly real. It is only the poetic side of life which he
sees, not its philosophic. George Eliot wanted to know the meanings of
things, and this very desire brings a largeness into her books which is not
found in Scott's. She was much the more thoughtful of the two, the one who
tried to realize to the intellect what life means. Yet her method of doing
this is not always the best one for the poet or the novelist. Scott was no
realist, and yet George Eliot has not been more accurate than he. Indeed,
he is far more truly accurate in so far as he paints the soul as well as
the body of life. The sad endings of her novels grew out of a false theory,
and from her inability to see anything of spiritual reality beyond the
little round of man's earthly destiny. She did not accept the doctrine that
art is to be cultivated only for art's sake, for art was always to her the
vehicle of moral or philosophic teaching. The limitations of her art
largely lay in the direction of her agnosticism. Scott and George Sand gain
for their work a great power and effect by their acceptance of the
spiritual as real. There is a light, a subtle aroma, a width of vision, a
sense of reality, in their work from this source, which is wanting in
George Eliot's. The illimitable mystery beyond the region of the real is
the greatest fact man has presented to him, and that region is a reality in
all the effects it works on humanity. No poet can ignore it or try to limit
it to humanity without a loss to his work. It is this subtle, penetrative,
aromatic and mystic power of the ideal which is most to be felt as lacking
in the works of George Eliot. Much as we may praise her, we can but feel
this limitation. Great as is our admiration, we can but feel that there is
a higher range of poetic and artistic creation than any she reached.
The quotations presented from her early writings prove that George Eliot
began her career as a novelist with a fully elaborated conception of the
purposes of the novel and of the methods to be followed in its production.
She had thoroughly studied the subject, had read many of the best works of
the best writers, and had formed a carefully digested theory of the novel.
That she could do this is rather an indication of critical than of creative
power. Her novels everywhere betray the greatness of her reasoning powers,
that she was a thinker, that she had strong powers of intellectual
analysis, and that she had a logical, accurate mind. Had her mind taken no
other direction than this, however, she never could have become a great
novelist. These essays indicated something beside powers of reasoning and
psychological analysis. They also indicated her capacity for imaginative
insight into the motives and impulses of human nature, and an intuitive
comprehension of what is most natural to human thought and action. They
showed appreciation of sympathy and feeling, and delicate perception of the
finer cravings and tendencies of even the commonest souls. They gave
promise of so much creative power, her friends saw that in novel-writing
she was to find the true expression of her large qualities of mind and
heart. The person who could so skilfully point out the faults in the poor
novels rapidly issuing from the press, and realize the true indications of
a master's power in the creations of the literary artists, might herself
possess the genius necessary to original work of her own. Her early essays
are now chiefly of value for this promise they give of larger powers than
those which could be fully expressed in such work. They prophesied the
future, and made her friends zealous to overcome her own reluctance to
enter upon a larger work. She doubted her own genius, but it was not
destined to remain unfruitful.
VIII.
POETIC METHODS.
Had George Eliot written nothing else than the poems which bear her name,
she would have been assigned a permanent place among the poets. Having
first attained her rank in the highest order of novelists, however, her
poetry suffers in comparison with her prose. The critics tell us that no
person gifted with supreme excellence in one form of creative expression
has ever been able to attain high rank in another. They forget that Goethe
was great both in prose and poetry; that his _Wilhelm Meister_ is of
scarcely inferior genius to his _Faust_. They also forget that Victor Hugo
holds the first place among the French poets of the present century, at the
same time that he is the greatest of all French novelists. It would be well
for them also to remember that Scott held high rank as a poet before he
began his wonderful career as a novelist. A contemporary of George Eliot's,
to name a single instance of another kind, was equally excellent as poet
and painter. Dante Rossetti made for himself a lasting place in both
directions, and in both he did work of a high order.
In reality, the novel much resembles the narrative or epic poem; and if a
work of true genius, it is difficult to distinguish it from the poem except
as they differ in external form. The novel has for its main elements those
qualities of imagination, description, high-wrought purpose, which are also
constituents of much of the best poetry. The novel is more expansive than
the poem, one of the chief characteristics of which is condensation; its
theme may take a wider range, and it may embrace those cruder and more
common features of life which are inappropriate to the poem. The novelist
can make a greater use of humor, he can give more detail to description,
and portrayal of character can be carried to a much greater extent, than is
usual with the poet. The poet requires a subject more sublime, inspiring
and naturally beautiful than the novelist, who seeks what is the more
human, nearer the level of daily social existence, and full of the
affecting even if ruder interests and passions of life. The novel is so
similar to the poem, and in so many ways requires such similar qualities of
mind for its production, that there is no inherent reason why the same
person cannot do equally good work in both. The supposition is that the
poet may become a novelist, or the novelist a poet, in all cases except
where there is some outward disqualification. The novelist may not have the
sense of rhythmical form and of metrical expression; and the poet may not
possess that constructive faculty which builds up plots, incidents and
characters. In nearly all respects but these the two forms of creative
genius so nearly assimilate each other, it is to be expected a novelist may
turn poet if he have a large imagination and a stimulating capacity for
metrical expression.
Novelists of strong imagination and a ready command of expressive words,
barely escape writing poetry when they only purpose to write prose. This is
true of Hugo, Auerbach, Dickens and George Eliot, again and again. The glow
of creation, the high-wrought impulse of imagination, the ideal conception
of life, all move the novelist in the direction of poetry. With much effort
he keeps meter and rhyme out of his prose, but simile and metaphor,
condensed expression, unusual words, poetic compounds, alliteration,
sublime and picturesque expression, will intrude themselves. Dickens even
permits meter and rhyme to conquer him, and weakens his style in
consequence. He grows sentimental, and the real strength of pure prose is
lost. George Eliot is often poetical in expression, touches the very
borders of poetry continually, but she seldom permits herself to lapse from
the strong, energetic and impressive prose which she almost uniformly
writes. Specimens of this noble poetic-prose may be found very often in her
pages. While it would be difficult by any transposition of words to turn it
into poetry, as may often be done in the case of Dickens's prose, yet it
contains most of the elements of a high order of poetry. In the account of
the death of Maggie and Tom is to be found a fine specimen of her style,
the last words being good iambics.
The boat reappeared, but brother and sister had gone down in an embrace
never to be parted; living through again, in one supreme moment, the
days when they _had clasped their little hands in love, and roamed the
daisied fields together_.
In the first paragraph of the thirty-third chapter of _Adam Bede_ is a
sentence which makes a successful stanza in iambics by the addition of a
single word.
The woods behind the chase,
And all the hedgerow trees,
Took on a solemn splendor _then_
Under the dark low-hanging skies.
It is very seldom, however, that George Eliot permits anything like meter
in her prose, and she is usually very reticent of rhythm. There is fervor
and enthusiasm, imagination and poetic insight, but all kept within the
limits of robust and manly prose. This capacity of prose to serve most of
the purposes of poetry may be seen in a marked degree in all of George
Eliot's novels. In the account of Adam Bede's love for Hetty this subtle
power of words and ideas to give the charm and impression of poetry without
rhythm or rhyme is exhibited in a characteristic manner.
I think the deep love he had for that sweet, rounded, blossom-like,
dark-eyed Hetty, of whose inward self he was really very ignorant, came
out of the very strength of his nature, and not out of any inconsistent
weakness. Is it any weakness, pray, to be wrought on by exquisite
music? to feel its wondrous harmonies searching the subtlest windings
of your soul, the delicate fibres of life where no memory can
penetrate, and binding together your whole being, past and present, in
one unspeakable vibration; melting you in one moment with all the
tenderness, all the love that has been scattered through the toilsome
years, concentrating in one emotion of heroic courage or resignation
all the hard-learned lessons of self-renouncing sympathy, blending your
present joy with past sorrow, and your present sorrow with all your
past joy? If not, then neither is it a weakness to be so wrought upon
by the exquisite curves of a woman's cheek and neck and arms, by the
liquid depths of her beseeching eyes, or the sweet childish pout of her
lips. For the beauty of a lovely woman is like music; what can one say
more? Beauty has an expression beyond and far above the one woman's
soul that it clothes, as the words of genius have a wider meaning than
the thought that prompted them; it is more than a woman's love that
moves us in a woman's eyes--it seems to be a far-off, mighty love
that has come near to us, and made speech for itself there; the
rounded neck, the dimpled arm, move us by something more than their
prettiness--by their close kinship with all we have known of tenderness
and peace. [Footnote: Adam Bede, chapter XXXIII.]
Love, music and beautiful landscapes continually inspire the poetic side of
her nature; and these themes, which are constantly recurring in her
chapters, draw forth her imagination and give fervor and enthusiasm to her
expression. Her love of nature is deep and most appreciative of all its
transformations and beauties. This sensitiveness to the changes of the
outward world is a large element in her mind, and indicates the reality of
her poetic gifts. This may be seen in a passage such as the following:--
The ride to Stone Court, which Fred and Rosamond took the next morning,
lay through a pretty bit of midland landscape, almost all meadows and
pastures, with hedgerows still allowed to grow in bushy beauty, and to
spread out coral fruit for the birds. Little details gave each field a
particular physiognomy, dear to the eyes that have looked on them from
childhood; the pool in the corner where the grasses were dank and
trees leaned whisperingly; the great oak shadowing a bare place in
mid-pasture; the high bank where the ash-trees grew; the sudden slope
of the old marl-pit making a red background for the burdock; the
huddled roofs and ricks of the homestead without a traceable way of
approach; the gray gate and fences against the depths of the bordering
wood; and the stray hovel, its old, old thatch full of mossy hills and
valleys, with wondrous modulations of light and shadow, such as we
travel far to see in later life, and see larger, but not more
beautiful. These are the things that made the gamut of joy in landscape
to midland-bred souls--the things they toddled among, or perhaps
learned by heart, standing between their father's knees while he drove
leisurely. [Footnote: Middlemarch, chapter XII.]
It is nature as affecting man, and man as transformed into a creature of
feeling and passion by the mysterious conditions of his existence, which
oftenest arouses the poetic fervor in her. The enthusiasm of high resolves,
yearnings after the pure and beautiful, and love's regenerating power, give
to her themes which kindle poetic expression to a glow. The vision of
Mordecai on Blackfriars' bridge affords a fine example of her love of the
ideal in moral purpose, and shows how stimulating it is to her imagination.
It is a poetic picture of the finest quality she has given in this chapter,
one that could easily have been made to find expression in verse of great
beauty; but it is poetry in thought and spirit alone, not in form or
structure. It is true prose in form, strong in its fulness of detail, knit
together with words of the right texture, built up into a true prose image
of beauty in thought.
Mordecai's mind wrought so constantly in images that his coherent
trains of thought often resembled the significant dreams attributed to
sleepers by waking persons in their most inventive moments; nay, they
often resembled genuine dreams in their way of breaking off the passage
from the known to the unknown. Thus, for a long while, he habitually
thought of the Being answering to his need as one distinctly
approaching or turning his back toward him, darkly painted against a
golden sky. The reason of the golden sky lay in one of Mordecai's
habits. He was keenly alive to some poetic aspects of London; and a
favorite resort of his, when strength and leisure allowed, was to some
one of the bridges, especially about sunrise or sunset. Even when he
was bending over watch-wheels and trinkets, or seated in a small upper
room looking out on dingy bricks and dingy cracked windows, his
imagination spontaneously planted him on some spot where he had a
far-stretching scene; his thought went on in wide spaces, and whenever
he could, he tried to have in reality the influences of a large sky.
Leaning on the parapet of Blackfriars' bridge, and gazing meditatively,
the breadth and calm of the river, with its long vista half hazy, half
luminous, the grand dim masses or tall forms of buildings which were
the signs of world-commerce, the on-coming of boats and barges from the
still distance into sound and color, entered into his mood and blent
themselves indistinguishably with his thinking, as a fine symphony to
which we can hardly be said to listen, makes a medium that bears up our
spiritual wings. Thus it happened that the figure representative of
Mordecai's longing was mentally seen darkened by the excess of light
in the aerial background. But in the inevitable progress of his
imagination toward fuller detail he ceased to see the figure with its
back toward him. It began to advance, and a face became discernible;
the words youth, beauty, refinement, Jewish birth, noble gravity,
turned into hardly individual but typical form and color: gathered from
his memory of faces seen among the Jews of Holland and Bohemia, and
from the paintings which revived that memory. Reverently let it be said
of this mature spiritual need that it was akin to the boy's and girl's
picturing of the future beloved; but the stirrings of such young desire
are feeble compared with the passionate current of an ideal life
straining to embody itself, made intense by resistance to imminent
dissolution. The visionary form became a companion and auditor, keeping
a place not only in the waking imagination, but in those dreams of
lighter slumber of which it is truest to say, "I sleep, but my heart is
awake"--when the disturbing trivial story of yesterday is charged with
the impassioned purpose of years. [Footnote: Daniel Deronda, chapter
XXXVIII.]
Many times in her prose George Eliot has recognized the true character of
poetry, and she has even given definitions of it which show how well she
knew its real nature. She makes Will Ladislaw say that--
To be a poet is to have a soul so quick to discern that no shade of
quality escapes it, and so quick to feel that discernment is but a hand
playing with finely ordered variety on the chords of emotion--a soul in
which knowledge passes instantaneously into feeling, and feeling
flashes back as a new organ of knowledge. [Footnote: Middlemarch,
chapter XXII.]
She thinks poetry and romance are as plentiful in the world as ever they
were, that they exist even amidst the conditions created by invention and
science; and if we do not find them there it is only because poetry and
romance are absent from our own minds. If we have not awe and tenderness,
wonder and enthusiasm, poetry cannot come near us, and we shall not be
thrilled and exalted by it. [Footnote: Daniel Deronda, chanter XIX.] Yet it
is not difficult to see that George Eliot is not a poet in the fullest
sense, because hers is not thoroughly and always a poetic mind, because she
reasons about things too much. The poet is impressed, moved, thrilled and
exalted, and pours out his song from his feelings and transfused with
emotion. George Eliot was given to speculation, loved exactness of
expression, and kept too close to the real. She had not that lightness of
touch, that deftness and flexibility of expression, and that versatility of
imaging forth her ideas, which the real poet possesses. Her mind moved with
a ponderous tread, which needed a prose style large and stately as its true
medium of expression. While she had poetic ideas in abundance, and an
imaginative discernment of nature and life, she had not the full gift of
poetic speech. She lacked inspiration as well as flexibility of thought,
her imagination was not sufficiently rich, and she had not the full sense
of rhythmic harmony.