ENGL 3312: The Victorian Novel Notes on George Eliots Middlemarch Context Dr. S.

Maier

George Eliot, the pseudonym of Mary Ann Evans, first published Middlemarch in eight parts with John Blackwood of London beginning in December 1871. On an interesting note, the story of Dorothea was not included in the original plan for the novel; rather, her narrative was developed separately beginning in 1870, more than a year after she had begun a novel called Middlemarch. Biography of a Pseudonym By the time Mary Anne Evans was twelve, her father (Robert Evans) realized that she was going to need a better than average education; because of his position as the manager of the Arbury Hall estate, he was able to give her a better than average education grounded in the works of classical literature found in the estates library. He realized that her looks would damage her chance at marriage and that she would have to rely upon her own resources. By the time she was a young woman, Mary Anne could discourse in French, Italian, Latin and Greek; many men found her both ugly, and some found her morbidly intellectual for a woman. During her lifetime, she was both lauded and denigrated for being of masculine mind. For others, her mind was her beauty. Henry James, in a letter to his father Henry James Sr., tells of his initial encounter with George Eliot at a dinner party: To begin with, she is magnificently ugly deliciously hideous [....] She has a low forehead, a dull grey eye, a vast pendulum nose, a huge mouth full of uneven teeth [.] Now in this vast ugliness resides a most powerful beauty which, in a very few minutes steals forth and charms the mind, so that you end as I ended, in falling in love with her. (10 May 1869) What kind of novel is Middlemarch? Thought to be the best example of a Victorian novel, and in some cases, the best Victorian novel, it is just too long and complex to place it in a single category or define it in only one manner; clearly, if only in its shear breadth, it engages with moral, social and historical issues, while at the same time confronting its social context with references to other literary pieces and/or forms, as well as with its sense of awareness of its own fictionality. It is, without a doubt, both a paradigm of Victorian realist fiction at the same time as it challenges the conventions of the realist and historical novel (note: the narrative is set back in time by forty years, not contemporary with Eliots writing). Reminder: definitions from novel handout!

 historical novel - novel that reconstructs a past age; cultural conflict in which fictional personages participate in actual events.

realist novel - characterized as the fictional attempt to give the effect of realism (i.e., representing human life and experience in literature as it seems to the common reader, and evokes the sense that its characters might exist; represented in minute detail the stuff of ordinary existence), by representing complex characters with mixed motives who are rooted in a social class, operate in a developed social structure, interact with many other characters, and undergo plausible, everyday modes of experience. sociological or social problem novel - emphasizes the influence of the social and economic conditions of an era on shaping characters and determining events, a problem novel that concentrates on the nature, function and effect of the society in which characters live; usually presents a thesis as a resolution to a social problem. Karen Chase, in George Eliot: Middlemarch (1991) claims It is impossible to consider the history of realism in the novel [] without quickly naming Middlemarch as a landmark [.] To the impatient question, But what do you mean by realism? It is tempting just to lift the novel high and to say, I mean this. And yet if Middlemarch is a work which confirms and dignifies a central literary tradition, it is also a work which shows the unsteadiness, even the self-contradictions, of the realist project. George Eliot can usefully be seen as that English novelist who most forcefully expresses the claims of realism and who most visibly shows its instability. (22) What do you think of that assessment? Eliot believed that art could change our lives by enlarg[ing] our sympathies as human beings, so perhaps she endeavors to give us as much of life that will allow for that human sympathy and understanding to arise. Clearly, there are many challenges of trying to write such an all-encompassing novel. Important questions the author might have to consider might include: How does the novel of such a type engage with binaries of the urban and the provincial? How does it engage with contemporary history, then set itself apart as an historical novel? Does a distinctive narrative voice heighten or subvert a realist project? If the organization of the novel is complex, does it reinforce or obfuscate the readers awareness of Middlemarch as a fictional construct? Lets consider some of the possibilities.

Middlemarch as a Provincial Novel The subtitle of Middlemarch is A Study of Provincial Life, an important hint to the reader that is often overlooked. Lets consider the implications authors assign meaning or subtext to such subtitles, otherwise, why would they include it? Many realist novels convey a vivid sense of place, a place that was usually familiar to the novelist; for example, Hardy creates Wessex to exemplify his own surroundings in Dorset County rather than specifically use Dorset. Eliot writes about an English region the Midlands or Middle/march (note: march can also mean the space in-between) to reconstruct in fiction a world she remembers from her youth. Example: Book I, ch XII) What kind of landscape does she give us? - attractive but with out drama - old oak tree gives connotations of the extensive passage of time, history, heritage - working pastures working landscape with working people - reminders of former industrial activity with the clay pots The gap is lessened between the author and the narrator to a certain extent in a manner that allows for the landscape to be vivid and realistic. Provincial can also mean the reverse of the metropolitan if the urban or metropolitan means the center of government, culture, intellectual excitement and is often cast in a derogatory manner or other that is a place less exciting, less advanced, often more conservative. The idea of a study implies a careful analysis of something; here, it is of a particular way of life.1 So what specific society does Eliot take as her point of investigation? The novel is written in 1872, but it is located in pre-Victorian England, the nineteenth century of 1829-1832, a period of time between the demise of the height of Romanticism and the upswing of the early Victorian age. Socially, there is still a clear demarcation of classes; trade classes are separated from the gentry in an old fashioned arrangement wherein, for example, Dorothea and Rosamond would not necessarily have been expected to meet. The narrator makes it clear that in

1 While it occurs after the writing of this novel, it is interesting to remember that Sigmund Freud writes his case studies in the 1880s/1890s that also analyze life, particularly womens lives.

4 that part of the country, before reform had done its notable part in developing the political consciousness, there was a clearer distinction of ranks and dimmer distinction of parties [.] (Book I, ch XI)

Part of Eliots implication is that the society is not static before reform and that individuals are interconnected by society. See examples: Dorotheas visit to Rome (Book II, ch XX) Dorotheas distress: is it a product of her provincial background? Limitations over her intellectual independence? Or something else? Lydgates dilemma over voting (Book II, ch XVIII) Mr. Brookes experiences and reactions as a candidate (Book V, ch LI) Caleb Garths intervention in railways (Book VI, ch LVI) In each case, the provincialism is set up for questioning by the reader for the effect that such conservatism, isolation and limitation places on the individual involved.

Start with these thoughts, and stay tuned: more notes as well as discussion boards will follow on Middlemarch and the Woman Question, the women of Middlemarch, social reform and marriage issues!