Social Analysis in the Novels of George Eliotстатья из журнала
Аннотация: If we were to limit our examination of George Eliot's powers of social analysis to those novels where she is concerned with expounding a political thesis, we would be forced to conclusions no less dispiriting to the historian of political and social ideas than to the literary critic. Fortunately, however, we should have scant material to work upon. Felix Holt, a conscientious attempt to write a didactic political novel, would be the major document. According to one of the conventions of the genre, this novel has as its hero a young, incorruptible man of the people who has pledged himself to a career of selfless devotion to a programme of reform. The action springs out of a political situation and follows the vagaries of party allegiance. George Eliot is striving to depict the turmoil and dislocation that arise even in the backwater of a small rural settlement in the days following the passing of the first Reform Bill, and, at the same time, she is pointing out and heavily underlining the moral inadequacies of philosophical radicalism. But even in Felix Holt this elaborate attempt to write a political novel cannot overcome the pull of other interests. Felix Holt's admirable sentiments, an amalgam of Carlyle, Comte and the Victorian conscience, are swamped by the intricacy of the plot and, more acceptably, by the firm and compassionate handling of the relationship between a mother and her estranged son. Only once again was George Eliot led astray by her enthusiasm for a political programme. The results this time are even more disastrous to her art, although fortunately they are apparent in only one section of the novel. The hero of Daniel Deronda is, like Felix Holt, a young and incorruptible reformer. This time, however, he emerges from a vague and mysterious background and he moves darkly toward a vague and mysterious goal. The goal becomes palpable when Daniel learns that he is a Jew and that circumstances have made him a messianic
Год издания: 1951
Авторы: Claude Bissell
Издательство: Johns Hopkins University Press
Источник: ELH
Ключевые слова: Political and Economic history of UK and US, Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism
Открытый доступ: closed
Том: 18
Выпуск: 3
Страницы: 221–221