Part 12

But what was fearlessly urged on a few chosen topics from the Haworth parsonage became the foreground and main subject with the assistant editor of the _Westminster Review_. We are, to-day, somewhat overweighted with problem novels; but George Eliot was the first among us to realise the full power of fiction as a vehicle more persuasive, if not more powerful, than the pulpit; for the fearless and intimate discussion of all the questions and difficulties which must confront a man, or a woman, who is not content to accept things as they are, or to believe all he is told. To-day we may detect

“a curious _naïveté_ in the whole impression George Eliot’s novels convey.... The ethical law is, in her universe, as all powerful as the law of gravitation, and as unavoidable. Remorse, degeneration of character, and even material loss, are meted out for transmission with the rigid and childlike sense of justice which animated the writers of the Old Testament. Her temper was Hebraistic, and goodness was more to her than beauty. It may be doubted whether in the world, as we see it, justice works as impartially and with such unmistakable exactitude, whether the righteous is never forsaken, and evil always hunts the wicked person to overthrow him.”

But we must remember that George Eliot’s conception of wickedness, if limited, was well in advance of her age; that she understood temptation, and could draw a most dramatically “mixed” character. Her people are not all black or all white. She knew how slight an error or slip, how amiable a weakness, could lead to actions which the Pharisee called sin, and the Puritan would punish with hell-fire. She entirely forgave Maggie Tulliver, she held out the hand of fellowship to Godfrey Cass, and even to Arthur Donnithorne. If “we are almost afraid of” Dinah Morris, she, too, certainly loved sinners. George Eliot, in fact, will not accept any opinion on authority, or follow the world in judgment; and if “the world has never produced a woman philosopher,” her work remains pre-eminent as the first complete and outspoken record of woman’s “scientific speculation to discover an interpretation of the universe,” her first conscious message to mankind; destined to “raise the standard of prose-fiction to a higher power; to give it a new impulse and motive.” She has now spoken for herself on conduct and on faith.

Nevertheless George Eliot remains a woman. We still look to her primarily for the revelation of woman, and woman’s vision of man. We have taken another step, onward and inward, towards the mystery of the feminine ideal, the meaning of the Home and the Family to those who make it. All this is far more complex, indeed, than anything we have studied in earlier chapters. It embraces, in _Romola_, some reconstruction of past times; in _Daniel Deronda_, some study of an alien race. It includes sympathy for a woman wandering so far from the natural feminine instincts as to abandon, and half murder, her own child; for a girl who, given to dreamy ideals and passionate self-sacrifice, will yet suffer attentions from the acknowledged lover of her cousin, simply because he is handsome. It reveals the genuine repentance and uplifting of a drunken wife; it permits “friendship” between a married woman and a young artist whose very vices are more attractive than the heartless tyrannical egoism of her husband. We have travelled a long way, certainly, from Catherine Morland and Fanny Price. We can imagine a new Lydia Bennet under George Eliot.

Still the problems are women’s problems: the solutions are feminine, as we may see from the eagerness with which they were condemned by man, the conservative and the conventional. “I’m no denyin’,” said Mrs. Poyser, “the women are foolish. God almighty made ’em to match the men.” It was George Eliot’s ambition, towards which she accomplished much, that “the women” should be less intent upon that _matching_, more willing, and able, to mould themselves after their own pattern: in their turn to form a creed, to establish a standard--wherein she was following, but more consciously, those who had gone before. As Huxley remarked, in answer to Princess Louise, she did not “go in for” the superiority of women. She rather “_teaches the inferiority of men_.”

For, verily, there is no more in it. Her women are lost outside the home; they are not financially, or intellectually, “independent.” They have no professions, no clubs, no sports. Their interests are confined to religion, domesticity, and love. Nor does George Eliot attempt to follow “the men” into politics[15] or business, on to the cricket field or the parade ground. A soldier is distinguished by his regimentals, a scholar by his library, a doctor by his gig. She has a strong partiality, tempered by criticism, for the clergy; she can distinguish, intelligently, between Church and Dissent; she knows a good deal about squires and farmers; she loves the labourer. We may safely regard her work as the continuation, and the completion, of our subject.

The completion, indeed, is rather intellectual than artistic. She covers the whole ground, as none of her predecessors had attempted; she makes the last final addition of subject by discovering, and facing, social problems; she applies the last word in literary professionalism; but inasmuch as her characters are more typical and more studied than Jane Austen’s, they are, in a sense, less modern and less universal. We may learn _more_ from her about women, and women’s opinions; but these are the women of one age only--fast awakening, indeed, and conscious of many troubling possibilities, but not free.

Their chief aim is, while widening their knowledge and sympathy, to speak with imperious accents of duty, that “stern Daughter of the Voice of God.” Despite her assumption of masculine logic and reasoning, itself an artistic blemish, she offers no explanation of her categorical and materialistic, ethical dogma. The distinction between good and evil with her is in the last resort a question of emotional instinct, haunted by “the faltering hope that a spiritual interpretation of the universe may be true.” It is impossible to avoid feeling that she accords the greatest strength of character to serene piety like that of Dinah Morris, or to Adam Bede’s conception of the “deep, spiritual things in religion ... when feelings come into you like a rushing, mighty wind.... His work, as you know, had always been part of his religion, and from very early days he saw clearly that good carpentry was God’s will.” In her heart of hearts, George Eliot, we are certain, would have echoed Mrs. Poyser’s preference for character over doctrine: “Mr. Irvine was like a good meal o’ victual, you were the better for him without thinking on it; and Mr. Ryde was like a dose o’ physic, he gripped you and worrited you, and, after all, he left you much the same.”

It was Mr. Irvine, you will remember, who put on his slippers before going upstairs to his plain, invalid sister; and “whoever remembers how many things he has declined to do even for himself, rather than have the trouble of putting on or taking off his boots, will not think this last detail insignificant.” It needs a woman, however, to appreciate such a service of love.

George Eliot, indeed, could be humorous, somewhat pedantically, and even genial about little things, and she recognised most fully their importance in life. But her more calculated and accumulative effects were all tragic or subdued melancholy; partly, no doubt, from this uncertainty of hers about faith and her passionate sense of justice, so relentless in its demand for the punishment of sin; partly also from that tinge of sadness which overshadows the narrow, old-fashioned dogma by which her own childhood was moulded. Hard as she strove for intellectual freedom, and eagerly as she proclaimed independence of judgment, the halter of early impressions was round her neck; and it is only by dwelling upon incidents or individuals, and ignoring the studied main motive, that we can gain from her work any of the joy in physical or natural beauty which should be an artist’s first care to impart.

Yet, after all, nature has triumphed over temperament. In reality, for example, Dinah Morris lives for us in her tactful tenderness for the querulous old Lisbeth, and in her yearning towards Hetty; not in the “call,” the “leading,” and the “voices” by which her ministry was inspired. On the other hand, we admire her dignified superiority to masculine criticism of women’s preaching: “It isn’t for men to make channels for God’s Spirit, as they make channels for the water-courses, and say, ‘Flow here, but flow not there.’”

Hetty Sorrel, again, was only adventurous through misfortune; she belongs to the fireside. Dorothea was a hero-worshipper; Maggie Tulliver is the ideal sister; Mary Garth the ideal helpmate. The crimes of Rosamond Vincy, if there be no mercy in their exposure, are wholly domestic; the sins of Janet are committed for her husband.

It is the same with the men. Amos Barton is only a poor country clergyman, and grey-haired Mr. Gilfil “filled his pocket with sugar-plums for the little children.” Adam Bede “had no theories about setting the world to rights,” and “couldn’t abide a fellow who thought he made himself fine by being coxy to’s betters.” The Tullivers, father and son, were, in their different ways, as fine specimens of honest tradesmen as Bulstrode was a consummate hypocrite of the provinces. Lydgate was no more than an exceptionally clever and cultured general practitioner, and we fancy that Will Ladislaw was a better lover than artist. George Eliot’s squires are typical ornaments of the countryside; her farmers belong as permanently to one side of the hearth as their wives to the other. Silas Marner, practising a trade that could not “be carried on entirely without the help of the Evil One,” since “all cleverness was in itself suspicious,” had no power of filling his life with “movement, mental activity, and close fellowship” outside the “narrow religious sect” in which his youth was passed.

Nancy Osgood “actually said ‘mate’ for ‘meat,’ ‘’appen’ for ‘perhaps,’ and ‘’oss’ for ‘horse,’ which, to young ladies living in good Lytherly society, who habitually said ’orse, even in domestic privacy, and only said ’appen on the right occasions, was necessarily shocking.” She supported “a cheerful face under rough answers and unfeeling words by the belief that ‘a man must have so much on his mind’”; and “had her unalterable code” ready for all occasions.

They are not an heroic company, you perceive, these sons and daughters of a highly intellectual woman-novelist. In its more primitive exponents their “kindness” is “of a beery and bungling sort,” their anger is brutal and bigoted; they are not really interested in general principles, in psychological analysis, in refined passion, or in the future of mankind. Yet they are very serious about life, a good deal puzzled by the apparent injustice of God, and filled with love or hatred towards all their neighbours. In this parish, as in most, everyone knows all about everyone else’s affairs, and finds them of supreme interest.

Thus George Eliot maintains the feminine attention to minutiæ; the woman’s centralisation of Life round the family. She has acquired knowledge, “read up” literature, and to some extent digested philosophy; but she applies her powers, her culture, and her training--from practice and association with professional writers--to the amplification and rounding off of woman’s art. She established domestic realism by the expression of feminine insight. She is content to leave other things to other pens. The appearance of generalisations not influenced by her sex is misleading. It is only a modern form of the old story. Her heart, and her genius, are those of a woman, womanly.

_Scenes of Clerical Life_, 1858. _Adam Bede_, 1859. _The Mill on the Floss_, 1860. _Silas Marner_, 1861. _Romola_, 1863. _Felix Holt_, 1866. _Middlemarch_, 1872. _Daniel Deronda_, 1876.

FOOTNOTES:

[15] _Felix Holt_ is a possible, but not a successful, exception.

THE GREAT FOUR

Before completing our general conclusions as to the aim and achievement of women’s work, it may be well to institute certain comparisons between the four writers of genius around whom we have chronicled our record of progress; to estimate the ground covered by their work; to analyse their ideals, witnessing change and development.

Although, as we have seen, all primarily domestic, if not actually parochial, the middle-class, “set” as a subject by Richardson, became--more or less consciously--subdivided in their hands. Fanny Burney confined herself, almost without reserve, to studies of town life, with an occasional digression to fashionable health resorts. It is true that her heroines may sigh for a sylvan glade or dream of green fields: no woman of sensibility could do less. In their minds the country must inevitably be allied to virtue and content. But we cannot pretend that the rural scenes of _Camilla_ are drawn from nature; and Miss Burney was, undoubtedly, most at home in the drawing-room, at the assembly, in the opera-house, or at the baths. Nowhere else can we find so vivid and lifelike a picture of Society in the eighteenth century--the dramatic contrast with “Commerce at play” recalling _Vanity Fair_. It is here, in fact, that Miss Burney’s exceptional personal experience gave her the enviable opportunity of drawing both Mayfair and Holborn at first hand. She is specifically Metropolitan, though we should not say Cockney. In her imagination there is no world outside London, no higher ambition than notoriety about Town.

The difference in Jane Austen’s work is almost startling. She seems practically unaware of London; and it would be difficult to name any group of intelligent persons so absolutely indifferent to its gaieties, its activities, or its problems as the characters in _all_ her novels. It may be that Lucy Steele could not so easily have caught Robert Ferrars elsewhere; but the few Town chapters in _Sense and Sensibility_ only illustrate our contention as a whole, since the relations between all remain precisely the same as in the country, and practically everyone is delighted to “get away again.” The John Knightleys and the excellent Gardiners, indeed, live in London: but we only meet them away from home; and, after all, the one “suggestive” comment on town life is the “unexpected discovery” that people who “live over their business” were able to “mix with” the County.

Jane Austen’s familiars are all drawn from the most unpromising circle: those who live “just outside” small towns, have just enough to live on without working for it, are just sufficiently well-bred to marry into “the County,” just simple enough to welcome a few “superior” townspeople. Doctors, attorneys, and--of course--clergymen, are included, as well as officers, naval or military, retired or on promotion. Elizabeth’s “He is a gentleman, I am a gentleman’s daughter,” defines the enclosure. The men, presumably, have business to transact, affairs to arrange. They read the newspapers and talk politics--among themselves. But Miss Austen does not concern herself with these aspects of life. Her heroines are not so gay as Miss Burney’s; they are not so thoroughly “in the swim.” But her picture is similarly one of home life, varied by “visiting” and “receiving.” She describes the distribution of one family into several--by “suitable” marriages. One section of English society, at one period, in the home, is completely brought to life again.

Miss Brontë, even more thoroughly ignoring London, does not exhaustively represent any one class, and has, indeed, little concern with “manners.” Nevertheless, practically all her characters have “something to do.” They follow a profession, or own a factory. Clergymen are still largely in evidence, but education--in different forms--has come to the front, and, what is still more significant, some of her heroines have to work for their living. Wherefore, apart from the increased intensity of emotion, the external atmosphere is far more strenuous, and in Shirley we even find the dawn of a social problem, echoes of the early struggle between Capital and Labour. The pictures of school life, at home and abroad, do not merely reproduce facts, but cry out for improvements. The intimate knowledge of Continental conditions is, in itself, a new feature.

Finally, George Eliot extends the sphere of action in many directions. Maintaining the middle-class realism of Richardson, in her case largely concentrated on small-town tradesmen and farmers, she still avoids London, but embraces every “profession,” and approaches, by expert study for “copy,” the labourers and mechanics “discovered” by Victorian novelists. She travels lower and more widely than her predecessors for atmosphere. She does not confine herself, like them, to personal experience. In _Felix Holt_ she deliberately arranges for the illustration of economic politics; in _Daniel Deronda_ she opens a big “race” problem; in _Romola_ she essays “historical” romance. The passionate emotional outbursts of Charlotte Brontë have become psychological analyses; “problems” of all sorts are discussed with philosophical composure and professional knowledge. Within her self-imposed limits, woman has covered the field.

For the revelation of womanhood, through the types chosen for heroines, we find that Miss Burney still idealises a form of “sensibility,” which does not exhibit much advance on the ethereal purity of the old-world romance. The difference, however, is important, since the type is studied from life, not created by the imagination. The essential features of this quality are susceptibility to the fine shades, delicate refinement, and an exalted ideal of love. It is itself thoroughly romantic, and separates heroines from ordinary mortals. Similar characteristics, if betrayed by men, may be attractive, but do not command respect.

Jane Austen, planting her challenge in the very title of her first novel, extols sense. Marianne, and--more subtly, perhaps--her mother, remain to secure our affection for a vanishing feminine grace; but, evidently, the type cannot survive the century. For, though few writers have actually said less about the rights of women or the problems of sex, no one has established with more undaunted conviction the progress to a new position. Gaily, and with well-assumed irresponsibility, brushing aside for ever “the advantages of folly in a pretty girl,” Jane _assumes_--with irresistible good humour--woman’s intellectual equality in everything that really matters. Catherine Morland is obviously a relic, conceived of parody; and Fanny Price was born at a disadvantage. Generally speaking, her heroines judge for themselves as a matter of course, and judge wisely. They even “judge for” the men. Their charm arises from mental independence.

Though to our modern notions their lives may seem empty enough, a thousand and one touches reveal advance on the eighteenth-century conception of “what is becoming to elegant females.” They demand rational occupation, common-sense culture, the right to express themselves. They fall in love at the dictate of their own hearts. They set the standard of fidelity. It is true that Colonel Brandon’s adopted daughter and Maria Bertram submit to convention, and that Lydia Bennet is let off more easily because Darcy had “patched up” the affair; but the feeling about purity is sound and clear--that is, feminine. The “sense of sin” experienced by Jane Fairfax may be a little strained, but we meet with no high-flown notions of self-sacrifice in Emma; Elizabeth encourages Darcy to an explanation; and women are no longer afraid of happiness. They have grown to recognise that their life is in their own hands, not in those of man; that it is largely in their own power to shape their own destiny; that they will be wise to create their own standard of conduct, to settle their own affairs. The ideal emerging is startlingly modern in essentials. Though the problems confronting us to-day have not arisen, we feel that Jane Austen’s young ladies could have faced them with equanimity, possibly with a more balanced judgment than our own. There is a hint, indeed, in _Mansfield Park_ that the poor woman may one day triumph over her sisters of leisure; for are not Fanny, William, and even Susan, the only real “comforts” to their elders? Sir Thomas “saw repeated, and for ever repeated, reason to ... acknowledge the advantages of early hardship and discipline and the consciousness of being born to struggle and endure.”

Curiously enough, Charlotte Brontë, while uttering the first feminine protest, seems to have slipped back somewhat on this question. Taking for text Anne Elliot’s claim that women love longer without hope or life, she demands, even for Shirley, a male “master.” The explanation of this attitude was partly temperament--since women of vigorous intellect always need a flesh and blood prophet (witness Harriet Martineau and George Eliot): and it arose partly from her individual circumstances. The men of her family were, in different ways, exasperatingly weak; the “strong” men of her native moorlands were naturally domineering: her imagination was stirred, and her mind trained, by the Belgian Professor, Monsieur Heger, who _was_ her master--technically, and who--as we learn from independent testimony--always took a delight in scolding his pupils. We do not, to-day, admire the feminine footstool; nevertheless Charlotte Brontë’s heroines have strong individual character, and are much given to defying the world. The type will never become popular in fiction, it is too angular intellectually, and too discontented. The quality of physical plainness has been seldom adopted by novelists, male or female. But in _Shirley_ Miss Brontë generously abandons many of her favourite ideals, for _both_ heroines. The types are mixed here; and we must feel that had circumstances encouraged a larger output, we might be compelled to modify many of our conclusions. It remains a fact that the authoress of _Jane Eyre_ and _Villette_ does not stand in the direct line of progress: save that she introduces the awakening of women to serious topics, and proves them intent not merely on self-revelation, but on reform. Her central inspiration, however, is passion: which no woman had hitherto handled; which few have since so powerfully portrayed.

It is not easy, even if possible, to summarise the more complex, and much varied, ideals of womanhood exhibited by George Eliot. Each of her heroines is a study from life; and, by this time, women were not all created in one pattern. Again, we can scarcely say that she has given us a heroine in _Adam Bede_, whereas _Middlemarch_ might claim to offer three. Maggie Tulliver shows little resemblance to Romola. Yet, undoubtedly, George Eliot had more conscious, and more definite, theories on women than any of her predecessors: she deliberately set out to expound and enforce them.