DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln

Title

Superior Domesticity: Two George Eliot Cats

Authors

Beryl Gray

Date of this Version

2010

Document Type

Article

Citation

The George Eliot Review 41 (2010)

Comments

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

Abstract

The Persian cat, Hafiz, appears in two scenes in Daniel Deronda (1876) .1 The first of these appearances occurs in chapter 18, which introduces the compact, creative little Meyrick women - mother and three daughters - just as they are about to become Mirah Lapidoth's hospitable benefactresses, though she is as yet unknown to them. They are gathered harmoniously together in the evening lamp- and candle-lit, miniature double parlour of their narrow riverside house. 'All four, if they had been wax-work, might have been packed easily in a fashionable lady's travelling trunk.'2 Their corporeal diminutiveness is expressly proportionate to their surroundings, but it seems also to be conceived as integral to their goodness; for it is reemphasized:

The only large thing of its kind in the room was Hafiz, the Persian cat, comfortably poised on the brown leather back of a chair, and opening his large eyes now and then to see that the lower animals were not in any mischief. (p. 181)

The easeful position chosen for Hafiz by his observant author is the position a cat would have chosen for itself; his contented benignity both affirms and contributes to the atmosphere of concord. But he has an additional function, for it is through him, or, more specifically, through the sporadic opening of his large eyes, that the scene is first animated. This movement, required for his humorously anthropomorphized supervision of the human 'lower animals' in the room, marks the chapter's transition from explicated tableau, to action and conversation.

George Eliot often included companion animals in her depictions of domestic interiors: in Scenes of Clerical Life, Mr. Gilfil spends the evenings of his later years in his sitting-room with no other society but that of his old brown setter; in Adam Bede, we see the Reverend Adolphus Irwine ensconced with his setter, the setter's pups, and a supercilious pug; Lucy Deane's King Charles spaniel is an indispensable figure in several key scenes in The Mill on the Floss; and so on. But no canine of any sort would have been suitable for the Meyrick household, for no dog larger than a lap-dog could possibly be accommodated by these little women in so confined a space, and a leisure-connoting lap-dog such as the tiny Maltese with which in chapter 12 Grandcourt taunts Fetch, his water spaniel, would be out of the question for such habitually industrious, self-reliant people. Hafiz, on the other hand, with his superior individuality asserted before any of the women move or speak, is their appropriate non-human associate because he is neither presented as a pet nor perceived as one. The meaning of the Arabic name bestowed on him - 'one who knows the Koran by heart’; or 'guardian' - endows him with a particular kind of authority. He does not guard as a dog might guard, but he is in a sense the guardian of the spirit of the place, watching 'restlessly' (p. 184) until the potentially disturbing girl Deronda has rescued from drowning and brought into the parlour has accepted the women's non-judgemental hospitality, and is herself seated with (and in) 'perfect grace' (ibid.). It is not until then that he demonstrates his acceptance of her by approaching 'with tail erect and rub[bing] himself against her ankles' (ibid.), an action intimating that Deronda may now safely leave her with his friends.