“God placed thee,” he says, “in the midst of the people even as if thou hadst been one of the excellent. In this way thou hast taught others, and hast failed to learn thyself. Thou hast cured others, and thou thyself hast been still diseased. Thy heart was lifted up at the beauty of thy own deeds, and through this thou hast lost thy wisdom, and art become, and shalt be to all eternity, nothing.”
The psychological development of each of the chief characters in this remarkable book proceeds by a natural law from the antecedents and surroundings of the individual. We feel as we read that the changes of thought and motive must have occurred just as they are described, yet in that description itself it is evident that George Eliot lacks something of dramatic power. She tells us in great detail what her characters think and why they act as they do. The highest form of art would show us this from their own words and actions without the telling. Her characters are often extremely complex. It might be harder to make them speak for themselves than in the case of simpler personages, such as those described by Dickens or Cervantes. Still the reader will often wish that George Eliot had not told him so much of motives and reasons, but had left these to necessary inference.
“Romola” is a work not addressed to the great mass of mankind, but to the student. It presupposes considerable knowledge on the part of the reader of Italian names, customs, and events. It is evidently the product of an elaborate study and of a rather intimate knowledge of Florentine institutions and history. It is essentially accurate in its description of the public events of the time, although there are some facts of minor importance which are not confirmed by the most authentic records.
George Eliot follows the chronological and not the logical order in her narrative. There is sometimes a lack of vividness which results from this, and the book as a whole does not impress itself readily on the memory. There are portions of the work which are overloaded with details concerning public ceremonies or historical facts, or illustrating the manners of the people; for instance, the long description of the festival of San Giovanni in the early part of the book. Indeed, the feeling is irrepressible that this work, especially the first half of it, is too prolix, and that unimportant and subsidiary matters becloud in a measure the essential facts upon which the tale depends. In the latter part of the work, however, the dramatic interest of the story becomes more intense, and the narrative proceeds naturally and directly to the double tragedy with which it closes—the death of Melema and the execution of Savonarola.
“Romola” is very little like “The Scarlet Letter” either in the scenes or the construction of the plot. It is far more elaborate than the American romance, yet there is a close similarity in the methods of thought of George Eliot and Nathaniel Hawthorne. The husband of Hester Prynne and the father of Tito Melema appear in the same sinister way, demanding vengeance. Though Florence is very little like the Puritan town, religious fanaticism is a prominent feature in both the stories. The two books leave much the same general impression upon the mind.
CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
FEODOR DOSTOYEVSKY
Dostoyevsky is one of the masters of the Russian realistic school. His best known novel, “Crime and Punishment,” is a psychological study of great power. It describes the atrocious murder of two women, an old money lender and her sister, by a young student, Raskolnikoff, and the train of events which afterwards led to the confession of the murderer and his transportation to Siberia.
Raskolnikoff has no sufficient motive for the crime, but he is led by the contemplation of Napoleon and other great men who have committed crimes to feel that he, too, is an exceptional creature, authorized to violate all laws of morality, and that he is guilty of no sin in killing the old women. His immediate purpose is robbery, to get the money necessary to prosecute his studies; yet so blunderingly does he go to work that he secures but little, and can make no use of it. The way in which his half crazed, vacillating intellect is finally induced to make a confession, is delineated with great dramatic skill. The examining magistrate, Porphryrius, also an eccentric, certainly shows great ability, not only in discerning the criminal, but in bringing him by gradual steps into a frame of mind which leads to confession, where there is no other sufficient evidence of guilt.
Most of the individuals described in the book are morbid, and some of them are grotesque; yet the reader is impressed with the consciousness that, in spite of inconsistencies and paradoxes, the story must be essentially true to the peculiar nature of the characters described.
The maudlin babbling of the drunkard Marmeladoff, giving the story of his debasement and the ruin and dishonor into which he has plunged his family, is just such talk as that kind of a man would indulge in when in liquor, and the picture which it sets before us is revolting, but infinitely pitiful and real. All the dreadful things which happen afterwards in the drunkard’s household—his tragical death, the insanity of his wife, and the beggary of their children—lie heavy upon our hearts, while they convince us that we are in a world where such things are realities.