renaissance and Christianity. Brought up to know only what the renaissance
had to teach, to delight in culture and to ignore religion, her contact
with Savonarola opened a new world to her mind. Her experience in life led
her to seek some deeper moral anchorage than was afforded by the culture of
her father and husband, yet she could not follow Savonarola into the region
of mystical visions and other-worldliness. Her life having broken loose
from the ties of love through the faithlessness of Tito, and from the ties
of tradition through the failure of culture to satisfy her heart, she
drifts out into the world, to find, under the leadership of the great
preacher, that life's highest duty is renunciation. His influence over the
noblest souls of his time is indicated in Romola's trust in him, and in her
acceptance of him as a master and a guide. When this guide failed, as all
human guides must fail, she found peace in the service of others. In living
for humanity, her sorrows were turned into strength, and her renunciation
became a religion. It is Romola who represents George Eliot in this book,
gives voice to her ideas, and who preaches the new gospel she would have
the world learn. If Romola has her limitations as a conception of womanly
character, is too "passionless and didactic," yet she does admirably
represent the influence on a thoughtful woman of a contention between
culture and religion, and how such a person may gradually attain to a
self-poised life in loving service toward others. She is not an ideal
woman. She was given a character which prevents her being quite attractive,
because she was made to represent ideas and social tendencies.
The altruistic doctrine of renunciation, and of living for others, is more
fully developed in _Romola_ than in any other of George Eliot's books
except _The Mill on the Floss_. That the truest satisfaction life can
afford is to be found in work done for human good is conspicuously shown in
the experiences of Romola. She finds no peace as a follower of Savonarola,
she finds no abiding content in philosophy; but toil for others among the
sick, suffering and dying, brings heavenly joy and a great calm. She had no
special love for this work, her early education had even made it repulsive;
but Savonarola had shown her that in this direction lay life's true aim. He
communicated to her his own enthusiasm for humanity, and she retained this
faith even after her loss of confidence in him had loosened her hold on his
religious teachings. She went beyond her teacher and inspirer, learned his
lessons better than he did himself, and came to see that a true religion is
not of a sect or party, but humanitarian. When she warned him against his
fanatical devotion to his party, he attempted to justify his narrow policy
by identifying true Christianity with his own work, Romola replied,--
"Do you then know so well what will further the coming of God's
kingdom, father, that you will dare to despise the plea of mercy--of
justice--of faithfulness to your own teaching? Take care, father, lest
your enemies have some reason when they say that, in your visions of
what will further God's kingdom, you see only what will strengthen your
own party."
"And that is true!" said Savonarola, with flashing eyes. Romola's voice
had seemed to him in that moment the voice of his enemies. "The cause
of my party _is_ the cause of God's kingdom."
"I do not believe it!" said Romola, her whole frame shaken with
passionate repugnance. "God's kingdom is something wider--else let
me stand outside it with the beings that I love."
The two faces were lit up, each with an opposite emotion, each with an
opposite certitude. Further words were impossible. Romola hastily
covered her head and went out in silence. [Footnote: Chapter LIX.]
Savonarola forgot the better spirit of his own teachings, he sought to
become a political leader. It was his ruin, for his purpose was vitiated,
and his influence waned. George Eliot well says that "no man ever struggled
to retain power over a mixed multitude without suffering vitiation; his
standard must be their lower needs, and not his own best insight." This was
the sad fate of the great Florentine preacher and reformer. He lost his
faith, and he spoke without the moment's conviction. When this result came
about, all hope for Savonarola as a reformer was gone. He was then only the
leader of a party. George Eliot has well painted the effect upon Romola of
this fall, and given deep insight into the results of losing our trust in
those great souls who have been our guides. All the ties of life had
snapped for Romola; her marriage had proved a failure, her friend had
become unworthy of her confidence; and she fled.
Romola went away, found herself in the midst of a plague-stricken people,
gave her life to an assuagement of suffering and sorrow. Then she could
come back to her home purified, calm and noble. In the "Epilogue," we find
her speaking the word which gives meaning to the whole book. Tessa's child,
whom she had rescued, says to her that he would like to lead a life which
would give him a good deal of pleasure. Romola says to him,--
"That is not easy, my Lille. It is only a poor sort of happiness that
could ever come by caring very much about our own narrow pleasures. We
can only have the highest happiness, such as goes along with being a
great man, by having wide thoughts, and much feeling for the rest of
the world as well as ourselves; and this sort of happiness often brings
so much pain with it that we can only tell it from pain by its being
what we would choose before everything else, because our souls see it
is good. There are so many things wrong and difficult in the world that
no man can be great--he can hardly keep himself from wickedness--unless
he gives up thinking much about pleasures or rewards, and gets strength
to endure what is hard and painful. My father had the greatness that
belongs to integrity; he chose poverty and obscurity rather than
falsehood. And there was Fra Girolamo--you know why I keep to-morrow
sacred; _he_ had the greatness which belongs to a life spent in
struggling against powerful wrong, and in trying to raise men to the
highest deeds they are capable of, And so, my Lillo, if you mean to act
nobly and seek to know the best things God has put within reach of men,
you must learn to fix your mind on that end, and not on what will
happen to you because of it. And remember, if you were to choose
something lower, and make it the rule of your life to seek your own
pleasure and escape from what is disagreeable, calamity might 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, and that may well make a man
say, 'It would have been better for me if I had never been born.' I
will tell you something, Lillo."
Romola paused a moment. She had taken Lillo's cheeks between her hands,
and his young eyes were meeting hers.
"There was a man to whom I was very near, so that I could see a great
deal of his life, who made almost every one fond of him, for he was
young, and clever, and beautiful, and his manners to all were gentle
and kind. I believe when I first knew him, he never thought of anything
cruel or base. But because he tried to slip away from everything that
was unpleasant, and cared for nothing else so much as his own safety,
he came at last to commit some of the basest deeds--such as make men
infamous. He denied his father, and left him to misery; he betrayed
every trust that was reposed in him, that he might keep himself safe
and get rich and prosperous. Yet calamity overtook him."
Aside from this altruistic teaching which is developed in connection with
the life of Romola, the doctrine of retribution is vigorously unfolded
in the history of Tito Melema. The effects of selfishness and personal
self-seeking have nowhere been so wonderfully studied by George Eliot as in
this character. His career is minutely traced from step to step of his
downfall, and with a remarkable faithfulness and courage. The effects of
vice and sin are nowhere so finely presented and with such profound ethical
insight. A careful study of this character alone will give a clear
comprehension of George Eliot's conception of retribution, how the natural
laws of life drag us down when we are untrue to ourselves and others. It is
a great moral lesson presented in this character, a sermon of the most
powerful kind. Nemesis follows Tito ever onward from the first false step,
lowers the tone of his mind, corrupts his moral nature, drags him into an
ever-widening circle of vice and crime, makes him a traitor, and causes him
to be false to his wife. Step by step, as he gives way to evil, we see the
degradation of his heart and mind, how the unfailing Nemesis is wreaking
its vengeance upon him. He is surely punished, and his death is the fit end
of his career. We are shown how his evil deeds affect others, how the great
law of retribution involves the innocent in his downfall. Here George Eliot
has unfolded for us how true it is that our lives are linked on every side
with the lives of our fellows, and how the deeds of any one must affect for
good or evil the lives of many others.
Almost every leading thought of George Eliot's philosophy and ethics is
unfolded in greater or less degree in this novel. It is full of brave,
wholesome teaching, and of clear insight into the consequences of conduct.
_Romola_ is the most thoughtful, the most ambitious, the most philosophical
of George Eliot's works; and it is also the most lacking in spontaneity,
and more than any other shows the evidences of the artist's labors. Yet
by many persons it will be accepted as the greatest of her works, and
not without the best of reasons. It contains some of her most original
characters, gives a remarkable emphasis to great moral laws, and interprets
the spiritual influence of the conflict which is ever waging between
tradition and advancing culture as no other has done. It is a
thought-provoking book, a book of the highest moral aims.
XV.
FELIX HOLT AND MIDDLEMARCH.
The scenes of George Eliot's later novels are laid in England, but for the
most part among a town rather than a rural population. Instead of Hayslope
and Raveloe, Mrs. Poyser and Silas Marner, we have Middlemarch and Treby
Magna, Dorothea Brooke and Felix Holt. If Felix Holt is quite as much a
working-man as Adam Bede, occupying a social position higher in no respect
whatever, yet he is a workingman of a far different type. If Adam is the
nobler character, the truer type of man, Felix represents a larger social
purpose and has higher moral aims. In _Adam Bede_, we find rustic
simplicity and contentment, but in _Felix Holt_ we touch social aspirations
and political ambitions. The horizon has widened, the plane of social life
has lifted, there are new motives and larger ideals.
Very many of her readers and critics regard _Middlemarch_ as George Eliot's
greatest novel. This is said to have been her own opinion. With great
unanimity her readers pronounce _Felix Holt_ her weakest and least
interesting work. So far as the dramatic and artistic execution are
concerned, these judgments are not entirely correct. The machinery of
_Middlemarch_ is clumsy, and the plot desultory in aim and method. On the
other hand, _Felix Holt_ is strongly thought out and skilfully planned. It
has much of passion and enthusiasm in it, and not a little of pure and
noble sentiment, while _Middlemarch_ is never impassioned, but flows on
calmly. The author evidently put herself into _Felix Holt_ with the purpose
of teaching her own views about moral and social life. She lived in the
characters, felt and hoped with them, and wrote out of a deep, spontaneous
purpose. The sensational element has been more fully used, and the unity of
the plot more thoroughly developed, than in any other of her works, while
there is a living, breathing purpose in the story which is absent from her
later works. _Felix Holt_ is one of the two or three novels by George Eliot
which have an affirmative and thoroughly constructive purpose. It is this
purpose which makes the chief interest of the work. It is a story of social
reform, and is to be read as an embodiment of the author's political ideas.
From this point of view it is a story full of interest, and it is the one
of George Eliot's novels which will most strongly impress those who are
fully in sympathy with her ideas of progress and social regeneration. The
purpose of _Middlemarch_ is critical, to show how our modern social life
cramps the individual, limits his energies, and destroys his power of
helpful service to the world. This critical aim runs through the whole work
and colors every feature of it. The impression made by the whole work is
saddening; and the reader, while admiring the artistic power and the
literary finish of the book, is depressed by the moral issue. In strength
of imagination, intellectual insight, keen power of analysis, this novel
surpasses anything else George Eliot has written.
_Felix Holt_ is a novel with an ethical purpose. It aims to show how social
and political reform can be brought about. Felix is George Eliot's ideal
working-man, a man who remains true to his own class, seeks his own moral
elevation, does not have much faith in the ballot, and who is zealous for
the education of his fellows. He is a radical who believes in heredity, who
is aware of our debt to the past, and who would use the laws of social
inheritance for the elevation of mankind. The account Felix gives of his
conversion contains George Eliot's conception of what is to be done by all
workingmen who rightly understand what social reform is and how it can be
most truly brought about. It is to be secured by each workingman living not
for self and pleasure, but to do what good he can in the world.
"I'm not speaking lightly," said Felix. "If I had not seen that I was
making a hog of myself very fast, and that pig-wash, even if I could
have got plenty of it, was a poor sort of thing, I should never have
looked life fairly in the face to see what was to be done with it. I
laughed out loud at last to think of a poor devil like me, in a Scotch
garret, with my stockings out at heel and a shilling or two to be
dissipated upon, with a smell of raw haggis mounting from below, and
old women breathing gin as they passed me on the stairs--wanting to
turn my life into easy pleasure. Then I began to see what else it could
be turned into. Not much, perhaps. This world is not a very fine place
for a good many of the people in it. But I've made up my mind it shan't
be the worse for me, if I can help it. They may tell me I can't alter
the world--that there must be a certain number of sneaks and robbers in
it, And if I don't lie and filch, somebody else will. Well, then,
somebody else shall, for I won't. That's the upshot of my conversion.
Mr. Lyon, if you want to know it."
When Felix gives Esther an account of his plans, and describes to her his
purpose to do what he can to elevate his class, we have George Eliot's own
views on the subject of social reform. Felix says,--
"I want to be a demagogue of a new sort: an honest one, if possible,
who will tell the people they are blind and foolish, and neither
flatter them nor batten on them. I have my heritage--an order I belong
to. I have the blood of a line of handicraftsmen in my veins, and I
want to stand up for the lot of the handicraftsmen as a good lot,
in which a man may be better trained to all the best functions of
his nature, than if he belonged to the grimacing set who have
visiting-cards, and are proud to be thought richer than their
neighbors."
That the leading aim of _Felix Holt_ is to show the nature of true social
reform may be seen in the address made by Felix at the election, and even
more distinctly in the address put into his mouth in _Blackwood's Magazine_
for 1868. In the election speech Felix gives it as his belief that if
workingmen "go the right way to work they may get power sooner without
votes" than with them, by the use of public opinion, "the greatest power
under heaven." The novel points out the social complications of life, the
influence of hereditary privileges and abuses, and how every attempt at
reform is complicated by many interests, and is likely to fall into the
hands of demagogues who use the workingmen for their own purposes. The
address of Felix in _Blackwood's_ is really a commentary on the novel, or
rather a fine and suggestive summary of the moral, social and political
idea; it was meant to inculcate.
In _Felix Holt_, George Eliot would teach the world that true social reform
is not to be secured by act of Parliament, or by the possession of the
ballot on the part of all workingmen. It is but another enforcement of the
theory that it is not rights men are to seek after, but duties; that social
and political reform is not to be secured by insistence on rights, but by
the true and manly acceptance of altruism. Felix Holt is a social reformer
who is not a demagogue, who does not seek office or personal advancement,
but who wishes to show by his own conduct how a larger life is to be won.
He would introduce universal education; he would teach the great principles
of right living, physically and morally; he would inculcate the spirit of
helpfulness and mutual service. As a brave, earnest, self-sacrificing,
pure-minded lover of humanity, he is an inspiring character. George Eliot
evidently wished to indicate in his creation what can be done by workingmen
towards the uplifting of their own class. A better social order, she would
have us believe, cannot be secured from external sources; but it must be
had by an internal impulse moving those whose lives are degraded to seek
for higher things because of their own intrinsic good. The demagogue
seeks the elevation of workingmen because he can use them for his own
advancement; but Felix desires their elevation for the good of the whole
social structure. To this end he would inspire in his fellows a greater
moral ambition and zeal for the common good. He is a Mazzini, Castelar or
John Bright in his own social order; one who loves his own class, wishes to
remain in it, and who desires above all things that it shall do its part in
the work of national elevation. His aim is not to oppose the other classes
in society, but to make his own necessary to the prosperity of his country.
Felix is not an ideal character, for he is rough, uncultured and
headstrong; but he is an inspiring personality, with gifts of intellectual
fascination and moral courage. George Eliot has created no other character
like him, for Deronda and Zarca, whose aims somewhat resemble his, are very
different. He is no hero, he is not altogether an attractive person. He
has, however, the power, which some of the noblest of George Eliot's
characters possess, of attracting and uplifting other persons. He made
Esther realize the wide gulf between self-pleasing and duty, he inspired
her with moral courage and awakened her mind to the higher aims and
satisfactions life has to give us. He was undoubtedly meant for a moral
hero of the working class, a prophet to the laborers. With all his
limitations he is one of the noblest and most helpful characters in George
Eliot's books.
Other distinctive ideas of George Eliot's appear throughout this book. Her
theories of heredity, altruism and environment affect the whole development
of the story. Perhaps no more striking illustration of the law of
retribution is to be found in her books than in the case of Mrs. Transome.
This woman's sin corrupted her own life, and helped to darken the lives of
others.
The aim had in view in _Middlemarch_ is to illustrate the impotence of
modern life so far as it relates in moral heroism and spiritual attainment.
High and noble action is hindered and baulked by the social conditions in
the midst of which we live; and those who would live grandly and purely,
and in a supreme unselfishness devote themselves to the world, find that
their efforts are in vain. Dorothea has longings after a life of love
and service; she would live for high purposes and give herself for others'
good. Her hopes end in disaster almost; and she is cramped and baulked
on every side. Lydgate would devote himself to science, to patient
investigations for the sake of alleviating human misery and disease. His
social environment cripples him, and his life comes to nothing compared
with what he had aimed at, and what he was capable of attaining. Dorothea
is presented as capable of becoming a saint, being of an ardent, heroic
nature, a woman who yearned after some lofty conception of the world that
was to be made, not merely poetry, but an actual fact about her; who was
"enamoured of intensity and greatness," and "likely to seek martyrdom." The
difficulties which most beset such a nature are presented in the very first
chapter, where these saintly tendencies are considered as probable
obstacles to her making a good marriage.
A young lady of some birth and fortune, who knelt suddenly down on a
brick floor by the side of a sick laborer and prayed fervidly, as if
she thought herself living in the time of the Apostles--who had strange
whims of fasting like a Papist, and of sitting up at night to read old
theological books! Such a wife might awaken you some fine morning with
a new scheme for the application of her income which would interfere
with political economy, and the keeping of saddle-horses; a man would
naturally think twice before he risked himself in such fellowship.
The social life of Tipton really had no room for such a woman, could not
employ her rare gifts, knew not what to make of her yearnings and her
charity. And Tipton is the world and modern life, which spurns the heroic,
has no place for the poetry of existence, can make nothing of yearnings and
longings for high heroism. Because the social order into which she was born
could not use her gifts, because the vision of life in her soul was other
and higher than that which society had marked out for such as she, her life
was wasted in an unhappy marriage. In an earlier age she would have become
a St. Theresa, for society then had a place for such souls. Now she bows in
reverence to a man of learning, dreams great things of tender service to
him; but this proves not to be the place in which she belongs. In the last
paragraphs of the book the author gives her own account of Dorothea's
failure to reach the good she sought.
Sir James never ceased to regard Dorothea's second marriage as a
mistake; and indeed this remained the tradition concerning it in
Middlemarch, where she was spoken of to a younger generation as a fine
girl who married a sickly clergyman, old enough to be her father, and
in little more than a year after his death gave up her estate to marry
his cousin--young enough to have been his son, with no property, and
not well-born. Those who had not seen anything of Dorothea usually
observed that she could not have been "a nice woman," else she would
not have married either the one or the other.