So, in "Adam Bede" we have all the circumstances of Hetty's seduction and the birth and murder of her illegitimate child; and in the "Mill on the Floss" there are the almost indecent details of mere animal passion in the loves of Stephen and Maggie. If these are, as the writer's more thorough-going admirers would tell us, the depths of human nature, we do not see what good can be expected from raking them up,—not for the benefit of those whom the warnings may concern (for these are not likely to heed any warnings which may be presented in such a form), but for the amusement of ordinary readers in hours of idleness and relaxation. Compare "Adam Bede" with that one of Scott's novels which has something in common with it as to story—the "Heart of Midlothian." In each a beautiful young woman of the peasant class is tried and condemned for child-murder; but, although condemned on circumstancial evidence under a law of peculiar severity, Effie Deans is really innocent, whereas Hetty Sorrel is guilty. In the novel of the last generation we see little of Effie, and our attention is chiefly drawn to the simple heroism of her sister Jeanie. In the novel of the present day, everything about Hetty is most elaborately described: her thoughts throughout the whole course of the seduction, her misery on discovering that there is evidence of her frailty, her sufferings on the journey to Windsor and back (for it is the Edie and not the Jeanie of this tale that makes a long solitary journey to the south), her despairing hardness in the prison, her confession, her behaviour on the way to the gallows. That all this is represented with extraordinary force we need not say; and doubtless the partisans of "George Eliot" would tell us that Scott could not have written the chapters in question. We do not think it necessary to discuss that point, but we are sure that in any case he would not have written them, because his healthy judgment would have rejected such matters as unfit for the novelist's art.
The boldness with which George Eliot chooses her subjects is very remarkable. It is not that, like other writers, she fails in the attempt to represent people as agreeable and interesting, but she knowingly forces _dis_agreeable people on us, and insists that we shall be interested in their story by the skill with which it is told. Mr. Amos Barton, for instance, is as uninteresting a person as can well be imagined: a dull, obtuse curate, whose poverty gives him no fair claim to pity; for he has entered the ministry of the English Church without any particular conviction of its superiority to other religious bodies; without any special fitness for its ministry; without anything of the ability which might reasonably entitle him to expect to rise; and without the private means which are necessary for the support of most married men in a profession which, if it is not (as it is sometimes called) a lottery, has very great inequalities of income, and to the vast majority of those who follow it gives very little indeed. Mr. Barton is not a gentleman—a defect which the farmers and tradespeople of his parish are not slow to discover, and for which they despise him. He is without any misgivings as to himself or suspicion of his deficiencies in any way, and his conduct is correctly described in a lisping speech of the "secondary squire" of his parish, "What an ath Barton makth of himthelf!" Yet for this stupid man our sympathy is bespoken, merely because he has a wife so much too good for him that we are almost inclined to be angry with her for her devotion to him.
Tina is an undisciplined, abnormal little creature, without good looks or any attractive quality except a talent for music, and with a temper capable of the most furious excesses. Although Janet is described as handsome, amiable, and cultivated, all these good properties are overwhelmed in our thoughts of her by the degrading vice of which she is to be cured; while her prophet, Mr. Tryan, although very zealous in his work, is avowedly a narrow Calvinist, wanting in intellectual culture, very irritable, not a little bitter and uncharitable, excessively fond of applause without being very critical as to the quarter from which it comes, and strongly possessed with the love of domination. Tom Tulliver is hard, close, unimaginative, self-confident, repelling, with a stern rectitude of a certain kind, but with no understanding of or toleration for any character different from his own. Philip Wakem is a personage as little pleasant as picturesque. Maggie, as a child—although in her father's opinion "too clever for a gell"—is foolish, vain, self-willed, and always in some silly scrape or other; and when grown up, her behaviour is such, even before the climax of the affair with Stephen Guest, that the dislike of the St. Ogg's ladies for her might have been very sufficiently accounted for even if they had not had reason to envy her superior beauty.
But of all the characters for whom our authoress has been pleased to bespeak our interest, Hetty Sorrel is the most remarkable for unamiable qualities. She is represented as "distractingly pretty," and we hear a great deal about her "kitten-like beauty," and her graceful movements, looks, and attitudes. But this is all that can be said for her. Her mind has no room for anything but looks and dress; she has no feeling for anybody but her little self; and is only too truly declared by Mrs. Poyser to be "no better than a peacock, as 'ud strut about on the wall, and spread its tail when the sun shone, if all the folks i' the parish was dying"—"no better nor a cherry, wi' a hard stone inside it."[1] Over and over this view of Hetty's character is enforced on us, from the time when, early in the first volume, we are told that hers "was a springtide beauty; it was the beauty of young frisking things, round-limbed, gambolling, circumventing you by a false air of innocence.[2] …"
[1] "Adam Bede," i. 228; ii. 75. [2] ibid., i. 119.
Her conduct throughout is such as to offend and disgust; and the authoress does not seem to be sufficiently aware that, while the descriptions of the little coquette's beauty leave that to be imagined, her follies and faults and crimes are set before us as matters of hard, unmistakeable fact, so that the reader is in no danger of being blinded by the charms which blinded Adam Bede, and Hetty consequently appears as little else than contemptible when she is not odious. Yet it is on this silly, heartless, and wicked little thing that the interest of the story is made to rest. Her agonies, as we have already said, are depicted with very great power; yet, if they touch our hearts, it is merely because they are agonies, and our feeling is unmixed with any regard for the sufferer herself.
This habit of representing her characters without any concealment of their faults is, no doubt, connected with that faculty which enables the authoress to give them so remarkable an air of reality. There are, indeed, exceptions to this, as there are in almost every work of fiction. Thus, Sir Christopher and Lady Cheverel strike us as old acquaintances whom we have known not in real life, but in books. We are not altogether sure of stately old Mrs. Irwine, and are sceptical as to Dinah Morris, notwithstanding the very great pains which the authoress has evidently bestowed on her—perhaps because she is utterly unlike such female Methodists as have fallen within our own (happily, small) experience; and Bob Jakin is a grotesque caricature, which would have been far better done by Mr. Dickens, who is undeniably great in the production of grotesques, although we do not remember that throughout the whole of his voluminous works he has ever succeeded in embodying a single natural and lifelike character. But, with a very few exceptions, "George Eliot's" personages have that appearance of reality in which those of Mr. Dickens are so conspicuously wanting. And while Mr. Dickens's views of English life and society are about as far from the truth as those of the French dramatists and romancers, "George Eliot" is able to represent the social circumstances in which her action is laid with the strongest appearance of verisimilitude. We may not ourselves have known Shepperton, or Hayslope, or St. Ogg's; but we feel as much at home in them as if we had….
Tulliver may be cited as another well-imagined and well-executed character, with his downright impetuous honesty, his hatred of "raskills," and his disposition to see rascality everywhere; his resolution to stand on his rights, his good-natured contempt for his wife, his very justifiable dislike of her sisters, his love for his children, and his determination that they shall have a good education, cost what it may,—the benefits of education having been impressed on his mind by his own inability to "wrap up things in words as aren't actionable," and by the consequent perception that "it's an uncommon fine thing, that is, when we can let a man know what you think of him without paying for it."[1] His love of litigation is reconciled with his belief that "the law is meant to take care o' raskills," and that "Old Harry made the lawyers" by the principle that the cause which has the "biggest raskill" for attorney has the best chance of success; so that honesty need not despair if it can only secure the professional assistance of accomplished roguery. And when, notwithstanding this, the law and Mr. Wakem have been too much for him, great skill is shown in the description of poor Tulliver's latter days; his prostration and partial recovery; the concentration of his feelings on the desire to wipe out the dishonour of insolvency, and to avenge himself on the hostile attorney. Indeed, we confess that, notwithstanding his somewhat unedifying end, Tulliver is the only person in "The Mill on the Floss" for whom we can bring ourselves to care much.
[1] "The Mill on the Floss," i. 32.
The reality of which we have been speaking is connected with a peculiar sort of consciousness in the authoress, as if she had actually witnessed all that she describes, and were resolved to describe it without any attempt to refine beyond the naked truth. Thus, the most serious characters make their most solemn and most pathetic speeches in provincial dialect and ungrammatical constructions, although it must be allowed that the authoress has not ventured so far in this way as to play with the use and abuse of the aspirate. And her dialect appears to be very carefully studied, although we may doubt whether the Staffordshire provincialisms of "Clerical Life" and "Adam Bede" are sufficiently varied when the scene is shifted in the latest book to the Lincolnshire side of the Humber. But where a greater variation than that between one midland dialect and another is required, "George Eliot's" conscientiousness is very curiously shown. There is in "Mr. Gilfil's Story" a gardener of the name of Bates, who is described as a Yorkshireman, and in "Adam Bede" there is another gardener, Mr. Craig, whose name would naturally indicate a Scotchman. Each of these horticulturists is introduced into the dialogue, and of course the reader would expect the one to talk Yorkshire and the other to talk some variety of Scotch. But the authoress, apparently, did not feel herself mistress of either Scotch or Yorkshire to such a degree as would have warranted her in attempting them, and therefore, before her characters are allowed to open their mouths, she, in each case, is careful to tell us that we must moderate our expectations: "Mr. Bates's lips were of a peculiar cut, and I fancy this had something to do with the peculiarity of his dialect, which, as we shall see, was individual rather than provincial."[1]