Discernment Do's and Dont's by George Elliott

Her big books-Henry James would refer to them as her “baggy Monsters”- came a few years later: Romola (1863), a monumental historical novel, exploring the religious and artistic ferment of 15th-century Florence, and Felix Holt, the Radical (1866), a background of the British labor movement of the 1830s. Finally, she began writing fiction-first short stories, then novels.Īmong her most notable early novels is the autobiographical The Mill on the Floss (1860), which is both a Wordsworthian paean to childhood joy and an unsettling exploration of childhood trauma. She then moved to editing and reviewing, staying in the shadow of others but becoming versed in contemporary issues and literary styles. She began by doing translations of German philosophy and theology, “soul-stupefying work” that nonetheless taught her respect for the meticulousness required for good writing. What is especially impressive about Eliot’s literary career is the way it continually widened in scope as new projects provided more room for the exercise of her intellect and imagination. She wrote and developed as a writer even at a time when women were discouraged from intellectual work (hence the assumption of her pen name, George Eliot, in place of her real one, Marian Evans).

She broke with her family and scandalized her society by choosing to live with a married man, George Henry Lewes, whose wife refused to divorce him. Her novels explore how the cultivation of moral character can serve as a source of meaning, even in the absence of a belief in God.Įliot began her career with all sorts of obstacles in her way: she was not rich she was not pretty she had no pedigree or social standing.

But Eliot presents a more practical solution. Spiritual belief had begun to ebb during the Victorian era what was there to replace it? Matthew Arnold in “Dover Beach” wistfully invokes love as the raft to cling to.

He describes the most dramatic moment during their meeting as follows: “Taking as her text the three words which have been used so often as the inspiring trumpet-calls of men,-the words of God, Immorality, and Duty,- pronounced, with terrible earnestness, how inconceivable was the first, how unbelievable the second, and yet how peremptory and absolute the third.”Īlthough Eliot’s successors, the Edwardians, would snicker at such “terrible earnestness,” the statement goes to the heart of Eliot’s greatness. In 1873, when George Eliot was at the height of her fame, she accepted an invitation to visit the critic F.

Discernment Do's and Dont's by George Elliott