George Eliot; a Critical Study of Her Life, Writings and Philosophy

by George Willis Cooke

"God is so good, He wears a fold
Of heaven and earth across his face—
Like secrets kept, for love, untold.
But still I feel that his embrace
Slides down by thrills, through all things made,
Through sight and sound of every place."

That art is to be nothing more than a copying and interpretation of nature
Mrs. Browning did not believe. In Aurora Leigh she says,—

"Art's the witness of what is
Beyond this show. If this world's show were all,
Mere imitation would be all in art."

The glow of genius burns up out of all her pages, and there is an aroma and a subtle power in them which comes alone of this conception of art. She could not rest content with the little round of man's experience, but found that all the universe is bound together and all its parts filled with a God-spirit.

"No lily-muffled hum of a summer bee
But finds some coupling with, the spinning stars;
No pebble at your foot but proves a sphere;
No chaffinch but implies the cherubim:
… Earth's crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God."

That is a larger faith and a truer faith than appears anywhere in the pages of George Eliot, and it is one which impregnates most of the best literature the world posseses with light and life. It is a faith which gives hope and impulse where the other saddens and unnerves.

There is wanting in George Eliot's books that freshness of spirit, that faith in the future, and that peaceful poise of soul which is to be found in the writings of Tennyson, Ruskin and Mrs. Browning. Even with all his constitutional cynicism and despair, the teachings of Carlyle are much more hopeful than hers. An air of fatigue and world-weariness is about all her work, even when it is most stimulating with its altruism. Though in theory not a pessimist, yet a sense of pain and sorrow grows out of the touch of each of her books. In this she missed one of the highest uses of literature, to quicken new hopes and to awaken nobler purposes. There is a tone of joy and exultation in the power life confers, an instinctive sense of might to conquer the world, in the best writing. To make men think, to move men to action, to confer finer feelings and motives, is the power of the true poet. When he does not accomplish this he has written to a lesser purpose. Literature aims either to please or to quicken the mind. It cannot please when it leaves the heart depressed and burdened with the failures and sadness of the world. If it is to please, it must make use of that goodness and joy which are in excess of evil and misery. It cannot quicken when it unnerves the mind and brings despair of moral purpose. If it is to inspire it must show that something great is to be done, and awaken the courage to do it.

That life has its sad and painful elements is a terrible fact, and the novelist who would paint life as it is must recognize them. It is quite as true that the good and the hopeful are more than the sad and painful, that right is more powerful in human life than wrong. The novelist who would paint life with an exact and even-handed justice, must not make all his endings sorrowful, for very many in real life are not so. The Mill on the Floss would have been a more powerful and effective book could Maggie have been made to conquer. It would have been quite as true to nature to have represented her as overcoming her defects, and as being purified through suffering. Is all suffering to conquer us, instead of our being able to conquer it, and gaining a more peaceful and a purer life through its aid? If Maggie is George Eliot in her youthful experiences, then the novel is untrue to fact in that Marian Evans conquered and Maggie failed. The same fault is to be found in Middlemarch, that Dorothea, great as she is, deserved a much better fate than that accorded to her. The elements of womanly greatness were in her character, and with all the barriers created by society she would have done better things had her creator been true to her capacities in unfolding her life-history. The effect of both these great novels is one of depression and disappointment. The reader always expects more as he goes on his way through these scenes, depicted with such genius, than is realized at the end. Disappointment is almost inevitable, for the promise is greater than the fulfilment. The like result is produced by those books which have the brightest closing scenes, as in Adam Bede and Daniel Deronda, where the author's aim was evidently hopeful and constructive. Silas Marner and Felix Holt are the only exceptions to this pessimistic tone, and in which justice is done to the better side of life. In all her later books the ending is painful. In The Mill on the Floss, Maggie and Tom are drowned after Maggie had been led to a most bitter end of her love-affairs. In Romola the heroine is left a widow, after her husband's treachery had brought him to a terrible death, and after Savonarola had suffered martyrdom. Dorothea marries into a life of ordinary drudgery, and Lydgate fails. Daniel Deronda and Gwendolen are separated from each other, and Deronda goes to the east in furtherance of a wild scheme of Jewish colonization. Fedalma loses her father by the treachery of her lover, and without hope conducts her tribe to Africa. Jubal dies dishonored, and Armgart loses her voice. Yet it is not merely that the conclusion does not lead to the expected result, but throughout there is a tone of doubt and failure. That George Eliot purposed to give life this tinge of sadness is not to be accepted as the true explanation of it. It is known that she did not have such a purpose, that she was surprised and disappointed that her books should produce such a result on her readers. The explanation is to be found in another direction.

She was an agnostic; life had no wide horizon for her. The light of a genuinely ideal and spiritual conception of life was not hers. The world was bounded to her vision, rounded into the little capacity possessed by man. Where others would have cast a glow of hope and sunset brilliance, promise of a brighter day yet to dawn over the closing scenes of her novels, she could see nothing beyond but the feeble effect of an earthly transmitted good. In this regard her books afford a most interesting contrast to those of the two other great women who have adorned English literature with their genius. The lot of Mrs. Browning and Charlotte Brontë was much sadder and more depressing than that of George Eliot; more of darkness and pain affected their lives. A subtle tone of sadness runs through their books, but it is not burdensome and depressing as is the case of George Eliot. There is hope with it, and a buoyant faith in the good, which lies above and beyond all pain and sorrow. With neither of them was this faith conventional, a mere reflection of the religion taught them in childhood. It was a thoughtful result of a large experience, and of hard contact with many of the severest facts of human experience. That wide horizon of spiritual reality which shone for them on every hand, lights all their work with a brilliance which almost puts out of sight the pain and sorrow of the world. The reader of their books is made to believe that life is an endless good; he is cheered and made stronger for what life offers him.

Agnosticism may have its great and heroic incentives, it may impel men to a nobler activity, but its literary effect, as a motive towards a more inspiring life, has not been satisfactory in the hands of George Eliot. Shakspere is not a teacher of philosophy or ethics, he has no doctrines to preach, no theories to advocate. What he believed, it would be difficult to ascertain from his writings; yet he is an effective teacher of morals, he stimulates into activity all that is best in man, life widens and deepens under the touch of his genius. So is it with Milton, Schiller, Moliere, Calderon, Montaigne and Wordsworth. So is it with George Eliot in all that concerns our duties, and even with our human sympathies. In the one direction of trust she is wanting, and her books are devoid of it. Shakspere makes us realize that God rules over the world; George Eliot leaves us with the feeling that we know nothing, and can hope for but little. That her theories really cast a shadow over the world, may be seen in all her dealings with love. Love is with her a human passion, deep, pure, blessed. It crowns some of her characters with joy and peace and strength; it is never impure and base in her pages. Yet it is human, it is a social force, it is to be made altruistic. It never gains that high poetic influence and charm which glorifies it in the writings of Mrs. Browning, Browning and Tennyson. Browning conceives of it as an eternal passion, as one with all that is divinest in man, as a medium of his spiritual development. In his pages it glows with moral promise, it inspires and regenerates. The poet should deal with love, not as a thing base and susceptible of abuse, but as an influence capable of the most beneficent results in the uplifting of man's nature. If it degrades, it also sweetens; and only that is love which makes life richer and more worthy. The true artist can afford to deal with that which pleases, not with that which saddens and disgusts. The real love is the pure love, not the depraved. The natural is the noble, not the debased life.