| | | | | | A year ago, most readers who had just finished Adam Bede | would have been greatly surprised to hear two things which | we now know to be true. It would have been very strange news | that Adam Bede was written by a woman, and it | would have been equally surprising to learn that within a | twelvemonth the authoress would produce another tale quite | worthy to rank beside its predecessor. Now that we are wise after | the event, we can detect many subtle signs of female authorship | in Adam Bede ; but at the time it was generally | accepted as the work of a man. To speak the simple truth, | without affectation of politeness, it was thought to be too good | for a woman's story. It turns out that a woman was not only able | to write it, but that she did not write it by any lucky accident. | The Mill on the Floss may not, perhaps, be so popular | as Adam Bede, but it shows no falling off nor any | exhaustion of power. We may think ourselves very fortunate to | have a third female novelist not inferior to Miss Austen and Miss | Bronte; and it so happens that there is much in the works of this | new writer that reminds of us these two well-known novelists | without anything like copying. George Eliot has a minuteness of | painting and a certain archness of style that are quite after the | manner of Miss Austen, while the wide scope of her remarks, | and her delight in depicting strong and wayward feelings, show | that she belongs to the generation of Currer Bell, and not to that | of the quiet authoress of Emma. Where all excel, it is | of no use to draw up a sort of literary class-list, and pronounce an | opinion as to the comparative merits of these three writers; but | no-one can now doubt that the lady | who, with the usual pretty affectation of her sex, likes to look on | paper as much like a man as possible, and so calls herself George | Eliot, has established her place in the first rank-of our female | novelists. | She has done us all one great kindness, for she has opened up a | field that is perfectly new. She has, for the first time in fiction, | invented or disclosed the family life of the English farmer, and | the class to which he belongs. She | | paints farmers and their wives and children, and their equals in | the little villages and towns around them, and brings before us | their settled opinions, convictions, and humours. Both in her | present novel and in Adam Bede she throws the date | of her story back a few years, and paints the farmers of a past | generation. Perhaps the type is altering now, and is too much | mixed up with other forms of English social life to present | salient peculiarities to the eye of the novelist. But George Eliot | not only draws the farmer of other days and his wife, but she | multiplies the shapes which she makes these people assume. In | The Mill on the Floss there is a whole volume devoted | to depicting the ways and doings of persons in the rank of Mr and | Mrs Poyser. It is scarcely possible that new friends of this sort in | novels should please us quite as much as the old ones, for we | have no longer the sensation of pleased surprise that | anyone can describe such people. But if | Mrs Poyser remains unequalled, the great variety of characters, | all distinct and yet all hitherto unanticipated, who figure in the first | volume of The Mill on the Floss, show that the range of | the writer's observation goes far beyond one or two specimens. | The most conspicuous of these characters are three sisters who | belong to the family of Dodson, and are possessed with an | immovable belief in the innate superiority of everything Dodson. | These sisters have married three men dissimilar enough in taste | and temper to have each an individual and distinct existence, and | yet with a general resemblance in the cast and level of their | minds which stamps them as belonging to the same class and the | same generation. There is nothing in which George Eliot | succeeds more conspicuously than in this very nice art of making | her characters like real people, and yet shading them off into the | large group which she is describing. Some notion of what it | requires to make a good novelist may be obtained by reflecting | on all that is implied in the delineation of three farmer's | daughters and their husbands, with separate and probable | characters, and in allotting them suitable conversation, and | following the turns and shifts of their minds within the narrow | limits of the matters that may be supposed to interest them. It is | this profusion of delineative power that marks The Mill on | the Floss, and the delineations are given both by minute | touches of description and by dialogues. To write dialogue is | much harder than merely to describe, and George Eliot trusts | greatly to the talk of her farmers' wives in order to make her | conception of these sisters come vividly before us. Both in the | description and in the dialogue there are exhibited a neatness of | finish, a comprehensiveness of detail, and a relish for subdued | comedy that constantly bring back to our recollection the best | productions of Miss Austen's genius. Like Miss Austen, too, | George Eliot possesses the art of taking the reader into her | confidence. We seem to share with the authoress the fun of the | play she is showing us. She joins us in laughing at his characters, | and yet this is done so lightly and with such tact that the | continuity of the story is not broken. | Everyone must remember the consummate skill with | which Miss Austen manages this, and if we do not | | quite like to acknowledge that our old favourite has been | equalled, we must allow that George Eliot performs the same | neat stroke of art with a success that is little inferior. | Portraiture, however, and the description of farmers and their | wives, only occupies one portion of George Eliot's thoughts. | There is a side of her mind which is entirely unlike that of Miss | Austen, and which brings her much closer to Charlotte Bronte. | She is full of meditation on some of the most difficult problems | of life. She occupies herself with the destinies, the possibilities, | and the religious position of all the people of whom she cares to | think. Especially she seems haunted with the thought of the | amazing discrepancy between what she calls

'the emmet-life' |

of these British farmers, and the ideal of Christianity. | She dwells on the pettiness, the narrowness, the paganism of | their character. She even takes a pleasure in making the contrast | as strong as she can. In her stern determination to paint what | she conceives to be the truth, to soften nothing and not to exalt | and elevate where she profoundly believes all to be poor and low, | she shocks us with traits of character that are exceptional, | however possible. In The Mill on the Floss an old | miller is ruined, and the fault, as he thinks, lies at the door of a | roguish lawyer. When he finds his ruin is accomplished, he | solemnly takes the family Bible, and in the fly-leaf records a | curse against his enemy. Usually, however, the proceedings of | the Dodsons and their set are much milder. It is the gossip, the | stinginess, the total absence of all spirituality in the farmer | circles that weigh upon George Eliot. She has set herself to | imagine how such influences would tell upon an exception to | the set, in a lively, imaginative, impulsive girl, the daughter of | the Dodson married to the miller. The history of this girl is | taken up when she is seven years old, and is continued until she | has been for some time a young woman. She goes through great | outward trials, in addition to the perpetual suffering inflicted on | her by relations who entirely misunderstand her. She has a | period in which fiction is everything to her, and she consoles | herself for all that reality imposes on her by the delightful | dreams of the imagination. When her suffering becomes too | intense, she takes refuge in mystical religion. Later on, she | seems to accept the doctrine inculcated by one of her lovers, | that resignation cannot be the highest end of human life, as it is | merely negative. She then passes into a stage where she is | absorbed in the fierce moral conflicts awakened by a passion to | which she thinks it wrong to yield. All this is entirely in the vein | of Charlotte Bronte, and The Mill on the Floss shows | that George Eliot has thought as keenly and profoundly as the | authoress of Jane Eyre on the peculiar difficulties and | sorrows encountered by a girl of quick feeling and high | aspirations under adverse outward circumstances. But the | objection which we feel to difficult moral problems being | handled in fiction is certainly not removed by the writings of | either of these gifted women. What does it all come to except | that human life is inexplicable, and that women who feel this | find the feeling painful? It is | | true that a girl like the heroine of The Mill on the Floss | is not an improbable character. Many a girl in the | obscurity of an uncongenial home has first taken to ascetic and | mystical religion, and then had doubts forced on her whether | such a religion could give her peace. But because they really | occur, it does not follow that spiritual doubts and conflicts are a | proper subject for a novelist. Fiction has, in such matters, the | great defect that it encourages both the writer and the reader to | treat the most solemn problems of human life as things that are | to be started, discussed, and laid aside at pleasure. The conduct of | the story always affords an opening to escape from the | responsibility of definite thought. It does even more than afford | an opening ~~ it forces the mind to escape from reflection into | the study of outward life. The subjects started are, therefore, | always too large for the manner in which they are handled. | When women like George Eliot and Currer Bell are writing, we | are perhaps too interested in their style, in the freshness of their | thoughts, and in the story they are telling, to care much for the | abandonment of the moral difficulties that have been raised. But | no-one who considers how much | harm the light, trifling, and inadequate discussion of great | subjects does in the present day, can have much pleasure in | finding that a novelist powerful enough to become the example | and excuse of lesser writers exhibits ascetic religion as a | temporary phase in a young woman's career. | Passion, and especially the passion of love, is so avowedly the | chief subject of the modern novel that we can scarcely quarrel | with a novelist because the passion she chooses to describe is of | a very intense kind. We all know that love is neither a | smooth-going nor a strictly decorous and prudential affair, and | there are many emotions in female breasts, even when the sufferer | is judged by her acquaintance to be an ordinary sort of person, | which would shock friends and critics if put down in black and | white. But there is a kind of love-making which seems to possess | a strange fascination for the modern female novelist. Currer Bell | and George Eliot, and we may add George Sand, all like to | dwell on love as a strange overmastering force which, through | the senses, captivates and enthrals the soul. They linger on the | description of the physical sensations that accompany the meeting | of hearts in love. Curiously, too, they all like to describe these | sensations as they conceive them to exist in men. We are bound | to say that their conceptions are true and adequate. But we are | not sure that it is quite consistent with feminine delicacy to lay | so much stress on the bodily feelings of the other sex. | No-one could be less open to the charge | of thinking lightly of purity than George Eliot. She proclaims in | every page the infinite gain of virtue. In her new novel she has | set herself to describe the triumph of principle over feeling, as | in Adam Bede she described the dreadful results of | giving feeling the victory. But she lets her fancy run on things | which are not wrong, but are better omitted from the scope of | female meditation. The heroine, for example, is in love with a | man who passionately loves her, but | | as each is pre-engaged, they are separated by duty and honour. | All goes on very well until one day the lover, when alone with | the heroine, takes to watching her arm. Its beauties are minutely | described, as well as the effect gradually produced on him. At | last, in a transport of passion, he rushes forward, seizes on the | lovely arm, and covers it with kisses. There is nothing wrong in | writing about such an act, and it is the sort of thing that does | sometimes happen in real life; but we cannot think that the | conflict of sensation and principle raised in a man's mind by | gazing at a woman's arm is a theme that a female novelist can | touch on without leaving behind a feeling of hesitation, if not | repulsion, in the reader. In points like these, it may be observed | that men are more delicate than women. There are very few | men who would not shrink from putting into words what they | might imagine to be the physical effects of love in a woman. | Perhaps we may go further, and say that the whole delineation of | passionate love, as painted by modern female novelists, is open | to very serious criticism. There are emotions over which we | ought to throw a veil; and no-one | can say that, in order to portray an ardent and tender love, it is | necessary to describe the conquest of a beautiful arm over | honour and principle. As it seems to us, the defect of The | Mill on the Floss is that there is too much that is painful in | it. And the authoress is so far led away by her reflections on | moral problems and her interest in the phases of triumphant | passion, that she sacrifices her story. We have such entire | changes of circumstances, and the characters are exhibited under | such totally different conditions of age and mental | development, that we get to care nothing for them. The third | volume seems to belong to quite a new story. The Dodsons have | faded away, and the young woman with the overmastering | passion is very slightly connected with the little Maggie of the | Mill who makes her appearance at the beginning of the novel. | As in Adam Bede, the interest fades off towards the | end; and we are not sorry when the tremendous machinery of a | flood is called in to drown off two of the principal characters. | We hope that some time George Eliot will give us a tale less | painful and less discursive. There is something in the world and | in the quiet walks of English lower life besides fierce mental | struggles and wild love. We do not see why we should not be | treated to a story that would do justice to George Eliot's powers, | and yet form a pleasing and consistent whole.