Austen, Brontë, Eliot

Quotes from George Eliot’s letters and essays

Mill on the Floss

Letters:

• “…for my part when I hear of the marrying and giving in marriage that is constantly being transacted I can only sigh for those who are multiplying earthly ties which though powerful enough to detach their heart and thoughts from heaven, are so brittle as to be liable to be snapped asunder at every breeze. … I must believe that those are happiest who are not fermenting themselves by engaging in projects for earthly bliss, who are considering this life merely a pilgrimage, a scene calling for diligence and watchfulness, not for repose and amusement. I do not deny that there may be many who can partake with a high degree of zest of all the lawful enjoyments the world can offer and yet live in near communion with their God; who can warmly love the creature, and yet be careful that the Creator maintains His supremity in their hearts; but I confess that in my short experience and narrow sphere of action I have never been able to attain this; I find … total abstinence much easier than moderation.” Mary Ann Evans to a friend August 18, 1838.
• “I regard these writings as histories consisting of mingled truth and fiction, and while I admire and cherish much of what I believe to have been the moral teaching of Jesus himself, I consider the system of doctrines built upon the facts of his life and drawn as to its materials from Jewish notions to be most dishonourable to God and most pernicious in its influence on individual and social happiness. … I could not without vile hypocrisy and a miserable truckling to the smile of the world for the sake of my supposed interests, profess to join in worship which I wholly disapprove.” Mary Ann Evans to her father, explaining her change of faith. February 28, 1842.
• “If you receive her into your family circle, while present circumstances are unexplained, pray consider whether you will do justice to your own female domestic circle, and how other ladies may feel about going into a circle which makes no distinction between those who act thus, and those who preserve their honour unspotted.” George Combe to Charles Bray (friends of GE) after Mary Ann has begun to live openly with G.H. Lewes. Nov. 15, 1854
• “I do not think that Miss Evans would admit that Lewes had a wife now, or has had for some years, and they may both of themintend to fulfil all the conditions that belong naturally to the marriage state. Mind I have no wish to defend the part she is taking – only I do not judge her. I don’t think she is mad. She had organically, all the intellectual strength of a man and in feeling all the peculiar weaknesses of a woman. I know she would prefer the close and devoted affection of one mind, to the ordinary and customary attentions of all the world besides i.e. if she were called upon to make her choice.” Charles Bray in response to George Combe. Nov. 19, 1854
• “No one can be better aware than yourself that it is possible for two people to hold different opinions on momentous subjects with equal sincerity and an equally earnest conviction that their respective opinions are alone the only true moral ones. If we differ on the subject of the marriage laws, I at least can believe of you that you cleave to what you believe to be good, and I don’t know of anything in the nature of your views that should prevent you from believing the same of me. How far we differ I think we neither of us know; for I am ignorant of your precise views and apparently you attribute to me both feelings and opinions which are not mine. We cannot set each other quite right on this matter in letters, but one thing I can tell you in few words. Light and easily broken ties are what I neither desire theoretically nor could live for practically. Women who are satisfied with such ties to not act as I have done – they obtain what they desire and are still invited to dinner.” Mary Ann Evans to her friend Cara Bray, defending her relationship with Lewes. By this point, Mary Ann and Lewes are living together, have travelled throughout Europe together, and have returned to England, shunned by society and deserted by many former friends. September 4, 1855.
• “My life has deepened unspeakably during the last year: I feel a greater capacity for moral and intellectual enjoyment, a more acute sense of my deficiencies in the past, a more solemn desire to be faithful to coming duties, than I remember at any former period of my life. And my happiness has deepened too: the blessedness of a perfect love and union grows daily. … Few women I fear have had such reason as I have to think the long sad years of youth were worth living for the sake of middle age.” From George Eliot’s journal, reflecting on her past year of living with Lewes and writing her first short fictions. Dec. 31, 1857.

Essays:

• “In contradistinction to the practical infidelity and essentially destructive policy which would ignore the existence of wide-spread doubts in relation to established creeds and systems, and would stifle all inquiry dangerous to prescriptive claims, the [Westminster] Review will exhibit that untemporizing expression of opinion, and that fearlessness of investigation and criticism which are the results of a consistent faith in the ultimate prevalence of truth. Convinced that the same fundamental truths are apprehended under a variety of forms, and that, therefore, opposing systems may in the end prove complements of each other, the Editors will endeavour to institute such a radical and comprehensive treatment of those controverted questions which are practically momentous, as may aid in the conciliation of divergent views. … The elements of ecclesiastical authority and of dogma will be fearlessly examined, and the results of the most advanced biblical criticism will be discussed without reservation, under the conviction that religion has its foundation in man’s nature, and will only discard an old form to assume and vitalize one more expressive of its essence.” George Eliot in the mission statement of the Westminster Review upon assuming her position as anonymous editor-in-chief in January, 1852.
• “Science has no sex: the mere knowing and reasoning faculties, if they act correctly, must go through the same process, and arrive at the same result. But in art and literature, which imply the action of the entire being, in which every fibre of the nature is engaged, in which every peculiar modification of the individual makes itself felt, woman has something specific to contribute. Under every imaginable social condition, she will necessarily have a class of sensations and emotions – the maternal ones – which must remain unknown to man; and the fact of her comparative weakness, which, however it may have been exaggerated by a vicious civilization, can never be cancelled, introduces a distinctively feminine condition into wondrous chemistry of the affections and sentiments, which inevitably gives rise to distinctive forms and combinations. A certain amount of psychological difference between man and woman necessarily arises out of the difference of sex, and instead of being destined to vanish before a complete development of woman’s intellectual and moral nature, will be a permanent source of variety and beauty….” George Eliot. “Woman in France: Madame de Sablé” in Westminster Review, October 1854.
• “Women become superior in France by being admitted to a common fund of ideas, to common objects of interest to men; and this must ever be the essential condition at once of true womanly culture and of true social well-being. … Let the whole field of reality be laid open to woman as well as to man, and then that which is peculiar in her mental modification, instead of being, as it is now, a source of discord and repulsion between the sexes, will be found to be a necessary complement to the truth and beauty of life. Then we shall have that marriage of minds which alone can blend all the hues of thought and feeling in one lovely rainbow of promise for the harvest of human happiness.” George Eliot. “Woman in France: Madame de Sablé” in Westminster Review, October 1854.
• “There is not a more pernicious fallacy afloat in common parlance, than the wide distinction made between intellect and morality. Amiable impulses without intellect, man may have in common with dogs and horses; but morality, which is specifically human, is dependent on the regulation of feeling by intellect. All human beings who can be said to be in any degree moral have their impulses guided, not indeed always by their own intellect, but by the intellect of human beings who have gone before them, and created traditions and associations which have taken the rank of laws. Now that highest moral habit, the constant preference of truth both theoretically and practically, pre-eminently demands the co-operation of the intellect with the impulses; as is indicated by the fact that it is only found in anything like completeness in the highest class of minds. In accordance with this we think it is found that, in proportion as religious sects exalt feeling above intellect, and believe themselves to be guided by direct inspiration rather than by a spontaneous exertion of their faculties – that is, in proportion as they are removed from rationalism – their sense of truthfulness is misty and confused.” George Eliot in “Evangelical Teaching: Dr. Cumming” in Westminster Review October 1855.
• “Art is the nearest thing to life; it is a mode of amplifying experience and extending our contact with our fellow men beyond the bounds of our personal lot. All the more sacred is the task of the artist when he undertakes to paint the life of the People. Falsification here is far more pernicious than in the more artificial aspects of life. It is not so very serious that we should have false ideas about evanescent fashions … but it is serious that our sympathy with the perennial joys and struggles, the toils, the tragedy, and the humour in the life of our more heavily-laden fellow-men, should be perverted, and turned towards a false object instead of a true one. … We want to be taught to feel, not for the heroic artisan or the sentimental peasant, but for the peasant in all his coarse apathy, and the artisan in all his suspicious selfishness.” George Eliot in “The Natural History of German Life” in Westminster Review July 1856.
• “And the most mischievous form of feminine silliness is the literary form because it tends to confirm the popular prejudice against the more solid education of women. … [A]fter a few hours’ conversation with an oracular literary woman, or a few hours’ reading of her books, [men] are likely enough to say, ‘After all, when a woman gets knowledge, see what use she makes of it!’ Her knowledge remains acquisition, instead of passing into culture; instead of being subdued into modesty and simplicity by a larger acquaintance with thought and fact, she has a feverish consciousness of her attainments; she keeps a sort of mental pocket-mirror, and is continually looking in it at her own ‘intellectuality’…. A really cultured woman, like a really cultured man, is all the simpler and the less obtrusive for her knowledge; it has made her see herself and her opinions in something like just proportions; she does not make it a pedestal from which she flatters herself that she commands a complete view of men and things, but makes it a point of observation from which to form a right estimate of herself. … She does not give you information which is the raw material of culture – she gives you sympathy, which is its subtlest essence.” George Eliot in “Silly Novels by Lady Novelists” in Westminster Review, October 1856.