Transformation of Rage. Peggy Fitzhugh Johnstone

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СКАЧАТЬ given up on his relationship with Agnes. Whatever the complex causes of the failed marriage, Lewes and Marian soon became "most sincerely attached" to each other. As they established on their trip to the Continent what became their lifelong pattern of helping each other with their work, they also found strength in each other’s company. They managed to support themselves on the income they received from their writing. At the time, Lewes was working on a biography of Goethe, along with some columns for the Leader. During the eight months in Germany, Marian wrote articles for the Westminster Review and the Leader, translated a German article on "The Romantic School of Music," worked on her translation of Spinoza’s Ethics, translated passages of Goethe for Lewes’s biography, and when Lewes was ill, wrote down articles that he dictated. She also read intensively, especially in German literature (Haight, Biography 173-74).

      When they returned to England, Marian spent five weeks writing and reading alone in Dover while Lewes worked out the details of his permanent separation from Agnes. During that time Chapman invited her to take on the "Belles Lettres" section of the "Contemporary Literature" reviews in the Westminster Review. Haight records that during the seven quarters that she covered the section, "The 'Belles Lettres' . . . noticed 166 different books, and Marian doubtless looked at many more that were not worth mention." As he observes, "The work gave her a close practical acquaintance with the literary market-place." During this period she also wrote thirty-one articles for the Leader, one two-part article for Fraser's, four articles for the Saturday Review, and five long articles commissioned by Chapman for the Westminster(186).

      Lewes’s biography of Goethe, published in November 1855, received excellent reviews. Marian continued to write articles for the Westminster and the Leader, although her translation of Spinoza was her main task for the early months of 1856. She finished it in February, but it was never published; the manuscript remains at the Beinecke Library at Yale University (200). In May, Lewes’s interest in marine life took them to Ilfracombe, where he did research for his Sea-side Studies. During their stay there, Marian wrote what Haight calls "one of her finest articles for the Westminster,”"The Natural History of German Life" (201). From Ilfracombe they went on to Tenby for a five-week stay at the coast, again for Lewes’s zoological research. There Marian experienced a fresh sense of well-being. On July 20 she wrote in her journal, "I do not remember feeling so strong in mind and body as I feel at this moment" (qtd. in Haight, Biography 206). By September, she had begun to write fiction.

      Eliot explains in her journal, in "How I Came to Write Fiction," that September of 1856 had marked the beginning of a new era in her life (Letters 2:406). Her sense that the date marked the beginning of a new stage lends support to my view that the timing of her decision to write fiction, which occurred twenty years after her mother’s death in 1836, constituted a positive anniversary reaction that signified the beginning of her release from mourning. I also believe that the publication of her last novel, Daniel Deronda, twenty years later, in 1876, signified a (perhaps partial) resolution of her sense of loss, as well as the fulfillment of her hard-won sense of identity as an artist. I will therefore argue in this book that Eliot’s fiction is an example of Pollock’s idea that an artist’s creative products may represent "aspects of the mourning process itself" (1:127). Eliot’s expressed sense of renewal in the summer of 1856 suggests that she began her fiction writing from a position of strength. Both her rich background of accomplishments and her stable relationship with Lewes had contributed to her readiness for new growth.

      Eliot explains in her journal entry that although she had always had a "vague dream" of writing a novel, it was not until after her return from the Continent with Lewes that her "greater [than expected] success . . . in other kinds of writing" convinced them both that it would be worthwhile for her to try fiction. At Tenby, Lewes began to urge her to start immediately, but she deferred because of more pressing projects, until "one morning as I was lying in bed, thinking what should be the subject of my first story, my thoughts merged themselves into a dreamy doze, and I imagined myself writing a story of which the title was 'The Sad Fortunes of the Reverend Amos Barton.'" Deciding to make her dream a reality, she came up with the plan to write "a series of stories containing sketches drawn from my own observations of the Clergy, and calling them 'Scenes of Clerical Life' opening with 'Amos Barton.'" When "Amos Barton" was completed, Lewes helped her by proposing to John Blackwood, the publisher of his series of "Sea-Side Studies," a series of "tales and sketches illustrative of the actual life of our country clergy about a quarter of a century ago; but solely in its human and not at all in its theological aspect; the object being to do what has never yet been done in our Literature, for we have had abundant religious stories polemical and doctrinal, but since the 'Vicar' and Miss Austen, no stories representing the clergy like any other class with the humours, sorrows, and troubles of other men" (2:269). Lewes did not, however, reveal the identity of the author.

      Eliot’s first fictional characters were thus based on real-life figures from her childhood. The character Amos Barton was based on the Reverend John Gwyther, the curate who had officiated at Mrs. Evans’s funeral and Chrissey’s wedding (Haight, Biography 211). The title character in the second story, "Mr. Gilfil’s Love Story," was drawn from memories of the Reverend Bernard Gilpin Ebdell, the vicar who had christened Mary Anne; as Haight stresses, however, "the plot is entirely imaginary" (221). In the third and last of the stories, "Janet’s Repentance," Mr. Tryan is an "idealized portrait of Mr. Jones, the Evangelical curate at Nuneaton" during Mary Anne’s schooldays at Mrs. Wallington’s (227). The fact that the characters were drawn from the author’s memories of real-life figures did not go unnoticed. In Warwickshire in particular, much curiosity was aroused as to the identity of the author, who had assumed the pen name of George Eliot. Most people thought the writer must be a clergyman; Charles Dickens was the only person to guess (from the domestic details) that the author was a woman (Laski 55). It was not until she had begun to write Adam Bede that Eliot revealed her identity to her editor, John Blackwood. After the novel’s publication, as Haight records, the truth of its authorship "was spreading generally in literary circles" (Biography 287). The attempts by an imposter, a clergyman named Joseph Liggins, to claim credit for George Eliot’s work contributed to her gradual (although reluctant) willingness to let her identity be known to the public, although more than anything else, it was the "extraordinary success of Adam Bede” that finally "lifted the veil of anonymity" (297).

      Throughout the process of publishing Scenes of Clerical Life(1857), Blackwood responded favorably, although with honest criticism, to the manuscripts he received from the unknown author (Eliot, Letters 2:272, 275, 297). Judging from their correspondence, however, neither Eliot nor Lewes could accept the constructive criticism that might have helped the new fiction writer avoid mistakes later in her career (274, 299). Blackwood’s expressed "fear [in regard to "Gilfil"] that [Eliot] huddles up the conclusion of his stories too much" (323) was a criticism that turned out to be prophetic. Although his comment was noted by the author, she seemed not to understand how to work on the problem; she answered that "conclusions are the weak point of most authors, but some of the fault lies in the very nature of a conclusion, which is at best a negation" (324). Blackwood’s response to the first part of "Janet’s Repentance" also anticipates later comments about Eliot’s bleak presentation of provincial life. He wrote, "I should have liked a pleasanter picture. Surely the colors are rather harsh for a sketch of English County Town life only 25 years ago" (344). Arguing that the reality had already been softened enough, Eliot responded, "The real town was more vicious than my Milby; the real Dempster more disgusting than mine; the real Janet alas! had a far sadder end than mine" (347). At this point, Lewes added (in a separate letter) his opinion that "I was in raptures with 'Janet’s Repentance' when Eliot first read it to me and declared it to be the finest thing he had written" (351). Blackwood responded, characteristically, with reassurance (352). Yet when he ventured still another criticism of a scene in "Janet’s Repentance," Lewes, revealing what turned out to be a lifelong tendency to protect Eliot from criticism, finally wrote, "Entre nous let me hint that unless you have any serious objection to make to Eliot’s stories, don't make any. He is so easily discouraged, so diffident of himself, that not being prompted by necessity to write, СКАЧАТЬ