George Eliot

Dekker, James M. Interpreting Latimer Wordsworthian martyr or textual alchemist. George Eliot-George Henry Lewes Studies, no. 20-21 (1992) 58-62. 

Eliot, George. Silas Marner. London Dent, 1949. 

Throughout Silas Marner, George Eliot uses vocabulary, sentence structure, and philosophical commentary to teach her reader a moral. 

J For instance, George Eliot s Middlcmarch turns upon a massive coincidence that, to some extent, detracts from the pleasure of reading the book. 

George Eliot s Silas Marner. Edited by G. A. Wauchpoe, Professor in the University of South Carolina. Cloth. 288 pages. Illustrated. 35 cents. 

It is never too late to be what one might have been —George Eliot, writer... 

In Chapter III discuss some prescient fic or, better, extrascientifk sources for the study of the emotions. I first consider Aristotle, whose account of emotions in the Rhetoric remains utterly fresh and insightful. Next, I consider the treatment of emotions by the French moralists, from Montaigne to La Bruyere. Finally, I discuss what wc can team about the emotions from a handful of novelists and playwrights Shakespeare, Racine, Mme de Lafayette, Jane Austen, Stendhal, and George Eliot. 

Novels and plays are another inexhaustible source of insights and hypotheses. Whereas many of the fictional examples used by philosophers to illustrate this or that theory of the emotions fail to convince because they are too obviously made up for that purpose, the words and actions of characters in a novel or play have an independent authority that allows us to use them as examples and counterexamples. The writers I have found useful as touchstones for theories of the emotions are Shakespeare, Racine, Mme. de Lafayette, Jane Austen, Stendhal, and George Eliot. This is a personal and idiosyncratic choice. 1 claim only that we can learn about the emotions from their writings, not that we cannot also learn, and perhaps learn more, from other writers. 

Or as La Rochefoucauld might have said, "Pridefulness wants to be owed, amour-propre to be paid" (Cp. M228 cited above). To these abstract ideas George Eliot adds detail that make them vivid and compelling. By telling a story in which the reason for the initial benefaction was to offset a feeling of inferiority, she makes the donor s reluctance to see the recipient become independent more fully intelligible. 

In Middtemarch, George Eliot says that "Bulstrode shrank from a direct lie with an intensity disproportionate to his more indirect misdeeds. But many of these misdeeds were like the subtle muscular movements which are not taken account of in the consciousness, though they bring about the end that we fix our mind on and desire"... 

Mary Ann Evans wrote under the name George Eliot. 

George Eliot, Anne Tyler, Bernard-Henri Levy (Moon in Capricorn)... 

The finest language is mostly made up of simple unimposing words. —George Eliot (1819-1880)... 

George Eliot edited by George Levine T. S. Eliot edited by A. David Moody Ralph Ellison edited by Ross Posnock... 

Sometimes the image leaks or drifts over from being a description of the texture or quality of the writing to a description of what it feels like to read it, so that there is no perceptible distinction between the text and our response to it. So George Eliot s work procures for us a delicious warmth and release of spirit . 

As one comes back to the books after years of absence they pour out, even against our expectation, the same store of energy and heat, so that we want more than anything to idle in the warmth as in the sun beating down from the red orchard wall. ( George Eliot , 1925, 4, p. 174)... 

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