George Eliot, Middlemarch

PREFATORY NOTE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11

INTRODUCTORY NOTE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .13

MIDDLEMARCH: A QUINCUNX

FIVE GENRES

REALISM AND TRUTH . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .17

EPIC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .24

ENCYCLOPAEDIAC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .26

FAIRY TALE AND ROMANCE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .31

COMEDY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .36

PORTALS OF OBSERVATION: THE FIVE SENSES

SMELL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .44

TASTE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .48

SIGHT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .50

SOUND AND SILENCE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .58

TOUCH . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .66

FIVE THINGS OBSERVED

CLASS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .71

GENDER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .76

HUMANS AS ANIMAL SPECIES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .83

PATRIARCHY, PROPERTY, AND MONEY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .87

LANGUAGE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .91

FIVE METAPHORS

THE WEB . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .98

HEDGEROWS, TREES, FLOWERS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .101

LIGHT AND DARKNESS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .105

WINDOWS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .108

THE METAPHOR OF ‘MIDDLENESS’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .114

FIVE PASSAGES FOR COMMENT AND ANALYSIS

IV, XLIII, 396-398 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .129

VI, LXI, 578-579 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .135

VI, LXII, 594-596 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .142

II, XX, 181-182 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .147

III, XXXII, 284-285 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .151

BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .157

Michael Hollington is Life Member, Clare Hall, Cambridge University. He held chairs in Australia and France before retirement from the University of Toulouse – Le Mirail in 2007. He is best known as a Dickensian, but has written on a wide range of topics in modern literature in English and other European languages, especially German.

If terms to denote style periods in art and literature have any meaning, George Eliot can be approached as a writer belonging to the Realist school that flourished in the middle decades of the nineteenth century. And since it could be useful to some extent here to consider her work in relation to nineteenth-century Realism in art as well as in literature, I adopt as my basic definition of the term a sentence which stands at the beginning of the art historian Linda Nochlin’s useful book Realism: ‘its aim was to give a truthful, objective and impartial representation of the real world, based on meticulous observation of contemporary life.’ [NOCHLIN, 13]

If we want to distinguish between varieties of Realism – for I believe there to be a number of subspecies, as there are in the case of other stylistic terms, such as Romanticism – it may also be useful to assign George Eliot to ‘Classic Realism,’ in Colin McCabe’s influential phrase, as opposed to ‘Romantic Realism,’ in Donald Fanger’s. T. R.Wright does so, for instance, in his essay ‘Middlemarch as a Religious Novel, or Life without God,’ arguing that ‘it has both the advantages and disadvantages of being a ‘classic realist text on which the narrator imposes a restricted vision of ‘reality.’ (Hornback 641) Yet here, I think, caution is required, for if we ask ‘how restricted is George Eliot’s vision of reality?’ we may not find that Middlemarch beds down all that easily with the Oxford Reference Dictionary definition of ‘classic realism’ as an art ‘in which contradictions are suppressed and the reader is encouraged to adopt a position from which everything seems ‘obvious’… Such texts seek to obscure their own constructedness.’ Does it suppress contradictions, present the issues in play as obvious, and conceal its constructedness? Many might reply, of Middlemarch, not at all.