George Eliot Review Online

 

Authors

Melissa Raines

Date of this Version

2009

Document Type

Article

Citation

George Eliot Review 40 (Special Issue, 2009)

Comments

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

Abstract

In George Eliot: The Emergent Self, Ruby Redinger explains that it was through the demands of authorship that the woman Marian Evans 'evolved into another self, her writing self', essentially becoming George Eliot. Literary biographies of George Eliot in the last few decades have all, to varying degrees, focused on this transformation of the woman into the author. When considering George Eliot's first work of fiction, I think it significant that it is during the writing of the second 'scene' of Scenes of Clerical Life, 'Mr. Gilfil's Love-Story', that Marian Evans first chose to write and sign a professional letter to her publisher with the name 'George Eliot'. Obviously, it is only natural that with one story finished and another actively in the works, she began to identify with her authorial identity in a more definitive way.

But what is most interesting about the timing of George Eliot's personal ownership of her pseudonym is the fact that of the three 'scenes', 'Mr. Gilfil's Love-Story' is in most critics' eyes the least typically George Eliot. Thomas A. Noble argues that in writing it, George Eliot was not attempting the realist prose we immediately associate with her, but was actively 'experimenting in the creation of romantic fiction' - even going so far as to call this attempt a 'failure'. Whether or not we think the tale romance or realism, failure or success, I believe the issue is a bit more complicated. We must remember that the dramatic flashback about the orphaned Caterina is enclosed by a prosaic introduction and conclusion dedicated to the title character himself. Mr. Gilfil is a kind gentleman and a well-liked clergyman, but he is also presented as essentially ordinary, perhaps even vaguely uninteresting - at least in the opening chapters of the story. Indeed, George Eliot hints at a possible more tumultuous past within a few pages of apologizing for his rather mundane tendency to sip gin in the evenings. And yet George Eliot chooses to make him the title character. Through my examination of why she made this stylistic choice, I hope to show that this atypical George Eliot story is still one in which George Eliot's presence is unmistakable.

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