DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln

Title

THE 1984 GEORGE ELIOT MEMORIAL LECTURE: LOVE, KNOWLEDGE AND NARRATION: GEORGE ELIOT ON OTHER MINDS

Authors

Richard Freadman
D. Phil

Date of this Version

1985

Document Type

Article

Citation

The George Eliot Review 16 (1985)

Comments

Published by The George Eliot Review Online https://GeorgeEliotReview.org

Abstract

'It was by loving them ... that he knew them; it was not by knowing them that he loved'1 - such was Henry James's legendary conclusion about Balzac and his characters. James's point was simple but important: Balzac was, in his view, able to invest his characters with a special freedom and opaqueness because he loved them as one might love another person. They didn't spring complete and transparent from a fictional blueprint. ²

James makes a similar point about Trollope, a writer in whom he elsewhere finds fault. If Trollope 'was a knowing psychologist, he was so by grace; he was just and true without apparatus' and without effort'.³

Creation 'without apparatus' again suggests an understanding that is intuitive rather than calculating; an almost inadvertent, instinctive feeling for the veiled inner worlds of persons, both in fiction and in life. This is high praise indeed from a writer who counted himself among the select group of 'loving' creators of fictional character. ⁴