Engliterarium

The end is valid at the symbolic level, too, where River Floss stands for the cause of sustenance as well as ruin for the Tullivers. Some critics view that despite being drowned in the Floss, Maggie could have been killed by some other way. But it couldn’t have been credible enough. Had Tom killed Maggie, it would have been sensational and against the theme of the novel i.e. emotional self-control. Had Maggie committed suicide, she would have been reduced to a foolish sappy girl which Eliot didn’t like. Natural death would have been least artistic. Eliot also wanted to reunite the brother and the sister before death which would have been impossible in normal situation. She also wanted to show that the Floss which gave birth to whole of miseries, itself put an end to all the sufferings.

George Eliot is known as a modern novelist in spite of living in Victorian Age. She wrote in the fashion contrary to that of her contemporaries, Dickens, Thackeray, etc. She is not completely divorced from the traditions. She draws her picture in the Victorian style, but she develops it in a new direction.

The Victorians, on the whole, were instructive and they wrote what they wanted to write. Eliot, on the other hand, was an intellectual and she wrote what she should have written. She is known as the first intellectual novelist. Her novels are the embodiment of her ideas.

The main charm of the Victorians lies in the individual expression, whereas, in Eliot, our interest is kept up in the way she analyses and diagnoses problems. Eliot rejects dogma and wants to analyze the causes of every problem she comes across.

Her scenes are more real than those of the Victorians because her realism is not only documentary but also psychological. To other novelists, realism is an intellectual necessity but in her case, it is a creed and emotion rather ambition which follows avidly. Her picture is more realistic owing to her clear perception of realities. She draws her characters inside out.

The Victorians were satisfied with the apparent realities whereas Eliot penetrated deep into the phenomenon and brought to light the hidden causes.

The Victorians, too, were satirist but they satirize just to create humour so they were ordinary humorist, whereas, Eliot satirized as a serious thinker. Her humour was of a distinct type i.e. intellectual and psychological humour soaked into deep pathos. She fused together comic irony and mild satire to create humour and her end was to moralize. Her humour had a serious message underlying it. This kind of humour is employed by the modern novelists.

Other Victorians did have a moral touch but, in Eliot, we find moral earnestness. Like Fielding, she wrote to inculcate moral in the people. But her concept of morality was quite different from that of Fielding’s. She reshapes the consciousness of the individuals in order to remould the whole structure of the society. She believes in the presence of the moral code at the heart of the universe. She made novels the embodiment of her moral ideas. In “The Mil on the Floss”, she denounces the dominance of the self recklessness, loose-living etc and emphasizes on the absoluteness of duty, endurance, renunciation etc. her concept of morality is based on human values and the laws of human heart.

Her psychological approach also makes her modern. The clear sighted vision of the essential of character gives her a definite edge over the Victorians like Bronte, Dickens, Austen, etc. The grasp on the psychological essentials makes her draw complex characters better than the Victorians, because she draws them inside out.

The insight into human nature makes Eliot’s picture of human nature more homogeneous than that of Dickens, etc. She shows that saints and sinners are made of the same clay; however, the latter lack the necessary strength of mind. She has ardent sincerity which compensates for many of the feelings of her aesthetic judgment.

Eliot is revealer of the self. Characters like Maggie are the self-portraitures of Eliot. She unveils herself through her female characters.

Eliot broke away from the fundamental conventions of form and matter. She rejected the standardized formula. She conceived one idea and its logical development.

She is modern in inspiration, too. Earlier, novel was meant only for the entertainment of the middle class reading public. Eliot’s intellectual approach made novel a ‘meeting place of problems’. She studied Man in relation to higher aspects of life. Eliot was the first novelist to discover this particular track on which the modern novelists are treading today.

Though Eliot lived in the Victorian era yet she is modern novelist since she wrote in the modern fashion. But she cannot be called ‘Victo-Modern’. Eliot, in contrast, is exclusively orthodox and Victorian in her ideas and modern in her approach. She can also be differentiated from Hardy in the sense that he is peculiarly Victoria in his style and approach and modern in his ideas. To be curt, Eliot is a modern novelist living amongst the Victorians.

Eliot is one of the greatest literary critics of England from the point of view of the bulk and quality of his critical writings. His five hundred and odd essays occasionally published as reviews and articles had a far-reaching influence on literary criticism in the country. His criticism was revolutionary which inverted the critical tradition of the whole English speaking work. John Hayward says:

I cannot think of a critic who has been more widely read and discussed in his own life-time; and not only in English, but in almost every language, except Russian.

As a critic Eliot has his faults. At times he assumes a hanging-judge attitude and his statements savor of a verdict. Often his criticism is marred by personal and religious prejudices blocking an honest and impartial estimate. Moreover, he does not judge all by the same standards. There is didacticism in his later essays and with the passing of time his critical faculties were increasingly exercised on social problems. Critics have also found fault with his style as too full of doubts, reservations and qualifications.

Still, such faults do not detract Eliot’s greatness as a critic. His criticism has revolutionized the great writers of the past three centuries. His recognition of the greatness of the Metaphysical poets of the 17th century resulted in the Metaphysical revival of the 20th century. The credit for the renewal of interest in the Jacobean dramatists goes to Eliot. He has restored Dryden and other Augustan poets to their due place. His essay on Dante aroused curiosity for the latter middle ages. The novelty of his statements, hidden in sharp phrases, startles and arrests attention. According to Eliot, the end of criticism is to bring readjustment between the old and the new. He says:

From time to time it is desirable, that some critic shall appear to review the past of our literature, and set the poets and the poems in a new order.

Such critics are rare, for they must possess, besides ability for judgment, powerful liberty of mind to identify and interpret its own values and category of admiration for their generation. John Hayward says:

Eliot’s criticism offers both reassessment and reaction to earlier writers. He called himself “a classicist in literature”. His vital contribution is the reaction against romanticism and humanism which brought a classical revival in art and criticism. He rejected the romantic view of the individual’s perfectibility, stressed the doctrine of the original sin and exposed the futility of the romantic faith in the “Inner Voice”. Instead of following his ‘inner voice’, a critic must follow objective standards and must conform to tradition. A sense of tradition, respect for order and authority is central to Eliot’s classicism. He sought to correct the excesses of “the abstract and intellectual” school of criticism represented by Arnold. He sought to raise criticism to the level of science. In his objectivity and logical attitude, Eliot most closely resembles Aristotle. A. G. George says:

Eliot’s theory of the impersonality of poetry is the greatest theory on the nature of the process after Wordsworth’s romantic conception of poetry.

Poetry was an expression of the emotions and personality for romantics. Wordsworth said that poetry was an overflow of powerful emotions and its origin is in “Emotions recollected in tranquility”. Eliot rejects this view and says that poetry is not an expression of emotion and personality but an escape from them. The poet is only a catalytic agent that fuses varied emotions into new wholes. He distinguishes between the emotions of the poet and the artistic emotion, and points out that the function of criticism is to turn attention from the poet to his poetry.

Eliot’s views on the nature of poetic process are equally revolutionary. According to him, poetry is not inspiration, it is organization. The poet’s mind is like a vessel in which are stored numerous feelings, emotions and experiences. The poetic process fuses these distinct experiences and emotions into new wholes. In “The Metaphysical Poets”, he writes:

When a poet’s mind is perfectly equipped for its work, it is constantly amalgamating disparate experiences; the ordinary man’s experience is chaotic, irregular, fragmentary.

Perfect poetry results when instead of ‘dissociation of sensibility’ there is ‘unification of sensibility’. The emotional and the rational, the creative and the critical, faculties must work in harmony to produce great work of art. Critics stressed that the aim of poetry is to give pleasure or to teach morally. However, for Eliot the greatness of a poem is tested by the order and unity it imposes on the chaotic and disparate experiences of the poet. Wimsatt and Brooks are right in saying:

Hardly since the 17th century had critical writing in English so resolutely transposed poetic theory from the axis of pleasure versus pain to that of unity versus multiplicity.

Eliot devised numerous critical concepts that gained wide currency and has a broad influence on criticism. ‘Objective co-relative’, ‘Dissociation of sensibility’, ‘Unification of sensibility’ are few of Eliot clichés hotly debated by critics. His dynamic theory of tradition, of impersonality of poetry, his assertion on ‘a highly developed sense of fact’ tended to impart to literary criticism catholicity and rationalism.

To conclude, Eliot’s influence as a critic has been wide, constant, fruitful and inspiring. He has corrected and educated the taste of his readers and brought about a rethinking regarding the function of poetry and the nature of the poet process. He gave a new direction and new tools of criticism. It is in the re-consideration and revival of English poetry of the past. George Watson writes:

Eliot made English criticism look different, but not in a simple sense. He offered it a new range of rhetorical possibilities, confirmed it in its increasing contempt for historical processes, and yet reshaped its notion of period by a handful of brilliant institutions.

His comments on the nature of Poetic Drama and the relation between poetry and drama have done much to bring about a revival of Poetic Drama in the modern age. Even if he had written no poetry, he would have made his mark as a distinguished and subtle critic.

Eliot was not a psychologist. She didn’t have even the knowledge required by a psychologist; yet, she is called the first modern novelist since her approach is psychological. She is the pioneer of psychological fiction. With the transcription of the visible and real, she traces the ups and downs of the mental processes and the emotional states of complex character. Her sharp analysis helps her to come nearer to the truth of human nature, motives and impulses.

“The Mill on the Floss” is a psychological study of the state of an intellectual and sensitive girl in the English middle-class society, bound by convention. Maggie’s character is primarily the study of child psychology. Eliot’s psychological approach finds its best and main expression in characterization.

Stephen Guest is a vital character. There would have been no condition for him to make a moral choice, and Maggie wouldn’t have come across the greatest conflict which agitated her and caused her deep agony. Some critics accuse Stephen as a weakling for he was unable to allure Maggie. Stephen condemns himself as a mere “hair dresser’s block” and, to Swinburne, he was “a cur”. But, he did attract even Maggie like intellectual girl. The link between Stephen and Maggie and the moral choice that follows it together constitute a fine psychological study.

Though Eliot collared all her aspects as a novelist, her intellectual approach is more clearly found in characterization. She does not begin with the apparent personality but with the psychological forces and basics underlying the personality. Her portraits are ‘of the inner man’. Through intellectual and psychological approach, she traced virtues and sins to their causes.

Her characters are always consistent. Charlotte, who lays stress on the outer man, often fails to make the inner constant. There is a wide gap which even imagination can't fill up. The directing principles on which Eliot focuses and around which she construct her characters remain clearly understandable through every change. The insight into human nature makes her picture homogeneous that that of the Victorians.

She presents aspects of human nature which the Victorians cannot. She successfully describes how a character develops. Others cut a character into good and bad without explaining the essential causes that make a good character bad and vice versa. Eliot, however, portrays the evidences of this change with acuteness of observation.

She draws complex characters better than the Victorians because her method is inside-out. She shows the twisting of motives and gripping impulses. She shows that human mind is like a battle field where a tug-of-war between the two hostile forces ever persists. She shows how temptation comes, and leaves at the warning of conscience, comes back disguised and how it shows death to rise again and approach. As Maggie’s is tempted towards Stephen, she decides to resist it for her duty towards Philip and Lucy; temptation comes back when both declare love for each other, but decide not to pursue it; finally, the temptation, which shows death, rises again and attacks both Stephen and Maggie.

Because of the sharp and intellectual approach, she treats plain and living characters. Her characters are rather more life-like, for they are nearer to truth, outside as well as inside.

The world of “The Mill on the Floss” is of deceit, pride, vain glory, hatred, malice, cheap quarrels, etc. Eliot was a well-read and experienced person. She observed life minutely and deeply. She draws characters from her personal experience and paints them realistically. Moral conflict lies at the root of her chief characters. The conflict is possibly between duty and love, asceticism and sensuousness, the ideal and the real, or amid eternal forces and discipline.

Her portraits are characters and nature of men and their inner conflict. As her novels proceed, her characters grow to new dimensions. Maggie, who was impulsive, became matured and more balanced. Every character has tinge goodness and no one is thoroughly contemptible.

In “The Mill in the Floss”, she deals with child psychology and reveals it through action and words. She plans the working of child’s mind, his nature, imagination and impulsiveness. Child prefers to live in his own world and, for him, the forbidden things are the very apples for plucking. Maggie is a fine agent of child psychology. She is jealous, impulsive and has desire for Tom’s affection. Sensitivity, imagination and impulsiveness are linked together to make her suffer in a deep agony as a child, leading her into troubles and sufferings. Later, Maggie grows into a fine and matured woman.

Eliot presents a deep view of the problems of life relating the clash of hearts and emotions. Like Maggie, she shows that a child has more and more intellectual gifts. In the final analysis, Maggie’s character no longer remains the study of child psychology alone rather Eliot transforms it into a great study in characters, incited by complex impulses.

In a word, Eliot’s approach, intellectual and psychological, distinguishes her from other Victorians novelist and brings her on the brink of modern novelist.

George Eliot is known as a modern moralist despite living in Victorian Age. Other Victorians did have a moral touch but Eliot had the moral earnestness. She wrote to inculcate moral in the people. She reshapes the perception of the people to remould the whole structure of the society. She believes in the presence of the moral code at the heart of the universe. She made novels the epithet of her moral ideas. In “The Mill on the Floss”, she accuses the dominance of the self recklessness, loose-living etc and stresses on the absoluteness of duty, renunciation endurance, etc. Her concept of morality is based on human values and the laws of human heart.

Nature as a subject has been treated by different poets, novelists and dramatists. Everyone analyzes this subject according to his own mind. Shelley got the lesson of optimism from nature. He says:

If Winter comes can Spring be far behind

Keats talks about mellowing season, flowers, new trees and beauty of nature. Wordsworth’s treatment of nature made him a prophet and he calls nature a ‘mother’ or a ‘friend’.

Hardy was deeply interested in nature. He has a sensitive temperament about nature. An average intelligent observer notes small things and forgets the drawback of nature. Hardy, what he talks about the nature, results from the direct impressions of nature which he receives after observing it very deeply and carefully. Hardy’s concept is more realistic than romantic.

Nature is the important element in Hardy’s novels and especially in “Tess” nature serves as a living character and not for the background of the novel. Nature is not more friendly, almost in all of his novels, rather cruel and crashing. Hardy confines himself only to the dark aspects of nature. It is mainly because of his temperament that he does not turn to other aspects. He got the lesson of pessimism from nature. In his opinion:

Happiness is but an occasional episode in a general drama of pain.

He seems to believe that all is not right with the world. He studies nature in its all aspects; ordinary, grand, sad and happy. Nature does not have all the time a holy plan. In this novel, we find different shades of nature as we see it a holy, guileful, relentless and even romantic sometimes.

In “Tess”, Hardy calls nature a villain character. Tess would nave definitely escaped from the painful act if nature had not covered the place with darkness and coldness. Nature has nothing good to offer to Tess but only destruction and suffering. Hardy paints the bitter picture of life. He regards human beings as puppets in the hands of nature. All the misery and sorrows that we see in the world are there because of some external power called fate or nature. Tess did her best to avoid the sufferings and went for some positive work but it was the nature that left her alone with no destination. She was caught up by cruel clutches of nature that comes into the shape of Alec. Tess becomes a victim in the Alec’s lustful and wanton nature.

In the seduction scene, we see the major influence of nature. Nature welcomes its friend in the appointed place that is covered with romantic atmosphere. Darkness and quietness is prevailed everywhere. Seduction is a sort of intoxication. No one is willfully seduced. As Tess fell a victim to seduction, anyone would have been seduced under such romantic circumstances. So, all the elements of nature contribute to make her seduced.

Hardy discloses the rude aspects of life. He says where the guardian angels were when Tess was being raped. Nature is jut like a director and she handles her victim without knowing their will. It seems that Hardy’s concept of nature is like that:

As flies to wanton boys,
Are we to the gods,
They kill us for their sport.

Once again Hardy rejects the idea of Wordsworth who says that birth of a child is the beautiful scheme of nature, but Hardy ironically says that what kind of beautiful scheme is that a poor family has been awarded through a lot of children, which became the cause of Tess’ sufferings. Due to a lot of family members she faces so many sufferings. A critic says:

The elementary, grand and sad aspects of nature are the land which appears to him most is that which is freest from human beings.

In Tolbathays, nature seems very friendly. The Angel-Tess affair wouldn’t have been so beautiful, but for its being among nature. The atmosphere of Tolbathays is very pleasant. Angel proposes Tess in that romantic atmosphere. Sometimes nature seems to share in reality. It is her reflection of human moods, feelings and passions which are the percipient human mind observes in nature.

In fact Hardy is himself not satisfied by nature. He thinks that nature is always struggling against mankind in which physical comfort is nothing as compared to the mental anguish. Nature has the malaise treatment with human beings. She takes the cares to Tess’ sufferings in its bosom and places it one by one. It was a pre-planned work. All the elements of nature like fate, chance and incidents to hand to hand on Tess’ tragedy,

It looks that God is looking us just to feel pleasure. We have no guardian angels, no backing force on our difficulties. Hardy did not see anywhere ‘nature’s holy plan’ on the earth. So hardy seems unique who always sees the dark side of the picture and negates the bright one. Actually Hardy born on the lap of nature and what dark effects he extracts from nature, he employs all it in his novel “Tess”which darkens the life of all characters. Nature is just like ever awaking phenomenon of man’s life.