The Quest for Anonymity: The Novels of George EliotIn a new treatment of Eliot's booklength fiction, Alley argues that from the very moment she adopted a male pseudonym through to the major epic and tragic novels of her later life, the transcendence of fame was her major consideration. Focusing on one novel in each chapter, the study shows how the plights of Eliot's heroines and heroes do not end in frustration but in an affirmation of anonymous achievement, "the growing good of the world." For Eliot, heroism emerges through disclosure, rather than grandly executed action, and since the revelation requires discerning effort on the part of those watching, both observer and observed are celebrated. |
Contents
| 13 | |
| 27 | |
Heroic Perception in Adam Bede | 40 |
The Narrative OneRoom Schoolhouse of The Mill on the Floss | 54 |
Silas Marner and the Anonymous Heroism of Parenthood | 71 |
Romola and the Preservation of Household Gods | 82 |
Esther and Rufus Lyon A More Regenerating Tenderness in Felix Holt | 96 |
Lydgates Note and Dorotheas Tomb The Quest for Anonymity in Middlemarch | 114 |
Celebrity Anonymity and the Heroic Voices of Daniel Deronda | 136 |
Notes | 156 |
Bibliography | 168 |
Index | 179 |
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Common terms and phrases
achieve acknowledge action Adam Bede allusion Amos Barton androgynous anonymous hero anonymous heroism Antigone artist Bardo becomes Bildungsroman Casaubon chapter 17 character classical Colonus context create critics Daniel Deronda dlemarch Dorothea dramatic Eppie Esther F. R. Leavis Farebrother father Felix Holt female fiction final Floss Garth George Eliot Gilfil Gillian Beer Greek Gwendolen Harleth healing Hetty human ideal intellectual Irwine Irwine's Jennifer Uglow Klesmer literary living Lydgate Lydgate's Lyon Maggie Maggie's male masculine memory Middlemarch Mill Milton mind Mirah mock-heroic moral Mordecai narrative narrator novel Oedipus Ogg's once past and present perceive Piero Piero di Cosimo portrait prestige Prometheus protagonist quest reader reaffirmed heroic voice road to Emmaus role Romola Rufus Scenes of Clerical sense serves Silas Marner Silas's soul speaks story suggest sympathy tenderness tion Tom's tragedy tragic transcend Transome Tryan Tulliver University Press vision woman Woolf writes
Popular passages
Page 44 - If, then, to meanest mariners, and renegades and castaways, I shall hereafter ascribe high qualities, though dark; weave round them tragic graces; if even the most mournful, perchance the most abased, among them all, shall at times lift himself to the exalted mounts; if I shall touch that workman's arm with some ethereal light; if I shall spread a rain123 bow over his disastrous set of sun...
Page 75 - The thoughts were strange to him now, like old friendships impossible to revive; and yet he had a dreamy feeling that this child was somehow a message come to him from that far-off life: it stirred fibres that had never been moved in Raveloe old quiverings of tenderness old impressions of awe at the presentiment of some Power presiding over his life...
Page 51 - There is no sort of wrong deed of which a man can bear the punishment alone : you can't isolate your-self, and say that the evil which is in you shall not spread. Men's lives are as thoroughly blended with each other as the air they breathe : evil spreads as necessarily as disease.
Page 129 - That by desiring what is perfectly good, even when we don't quite know what it is and cannot do what we would, we are part of the divine power against evil widening the skirts of light and making the struggle with darkness narrower...
Page 103 - Phoebus replied, and touched my trembling ears; "Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil, Nor in the glistering foil Set off to the world, nor in broad rumour lies, But lives and spreads aloft by those pure eyes, And perfect witness of all-judging Jove; As he pronounces lastly on each deed, Of so much fame in Heaven expect thy meed.
Page 26 - But she told me that, in all that she considered her best writing, there was a " not herself" which took possession of her, and that she felt her own personality to be merely the instrument through which this spirit, as it were, was acting.
Page 44 - THIS Rector of Broxton is little better than a pagan ! " I hear one of my readers exclaim. " How much more edifying it would have been if you had made him give Arthur some truly spiritual advice. You might have put into his mouth the most beautiful things — quite as good as reading a sermon.
Page 31 - Art does not consist in mere imitation, is far from being new or singular. It is, indeed, supported by the general opinion of the enlightened part of mankind. The poets, orators, and rhetoricians of antiquity, are continually enforcing this position ; that all the arts receive their perfection from an ideal beauty, superior to what is to be found in individual naturg.
Page 153 - But not the whole of our destiny. Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, was speculative and irresolute, and we have a great tragedy in consequence. But if his father had lived to a good old age, and his uncle had died an early death, we can conceive Hamlet's having married Ophelia, and got through life with a reputation of sanity, notwithstanding many soliloquies, and some moody sarcasms towards the fair daughter of Polonius, to say nothing of the frankest incivility to his father-in-law.
Page 41 - I turn without shrinking, from cloud-borne angels, from prophets, sibyls, and heroic warriors, to an old woman bending over her flower-pot, or eating her solitary dinner...