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George Eliot, George Henry Lewes, and the Novel

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Alice R. Kaminsky
Alice R. Kaminsky*
Affiliation:
Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y.
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Extract

George Eliot's biographers and critics are generally aware of the important role George Henry Lewes played as her literary adviser. They describe how he helped her to develop her literary powers by means of his affection and sympathy. But the real extent of Lewes' influence in this connection has not been determined.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 70 , Issue 5 , December 1955 , pp. 997 - 1013
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1955

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References

page 997 note 1 George Eliol: A Critical Study of her Life, Writings and Philosophy, 2nd ed. (Boston and New York, 1883), pref. and ch. vii; Lewes, “The Lady Novelists,” Westminster Rev., lviii (1852), 129–141.

page 997 note 2 George Eliol (Boston, 1904), pp. 89 ff.; Lewes, “Realism in Art: Recent German Fiction,” WR, lxx (1858), 488–518.

page 997 note 3 George Eliot: essai de biographie intellectuelle et morale 1819–1854 (Paris, 1933), pp. 156 ff.; “The Natural History of German Life: Riehl,” WR, lxvi (1856), 51–79.

page 997 note 4 Bourl' honne, pp. 157–158. Laurence and Elizabeth Hanson, Marian Evans & George Eliot: A Biography (London, 1952), p. 192; Basil Willey, Nineteenth Century Studies (New York, 1949), p. 245; and Weldon Casey, “George Eliot's Theory of Fiction,” Philol. Papers West Virginia Univ. Bull., ix (June 1953), 28, accept Bourl'honne's view. However, much of Bourl'honne's study is vitiated by his rather unfortunate penchant for amateur psychoanalysis which leads him to make questionable assertions about the relationship between Lewes and George Eliot. Morris Greenhut in “George Henry Lewes as a Critic of the Novel,” SP, xlv (1948), 491–511, made the first noteworthy attempt to appraise Lewes' theory of fiction, but he was not concerned with correlating Lewes' and George Eliot's ideas on the novel.

page 997 note 5 Before 1856 Lewes, besides reviewing the work of various American, English, French, and German novelists, wrote the following on more important novelists: “H. de Balzac: Continental Literati,” Monthly Mag., vii (1842), 463–472; “George Sand: Continental Literati,” Monthly Mag., vii (1842), 578–591; “George Sand's Franĉois le Champi,” Athenaeum, 20 May 1848, pp. 502–503; “Balzac and George Sand,” Foreign Quart. Rev., xxxiii (1844), 265–298; “Charles Paul de Kock: Continental Literati, ”Monthly Mag., vii (1842), 134–142; “Historical Romance—Alexandre Dumas,” Brit. Quart. Rev., vii (1848), 181–204; “Historical Romance: The Foster Brother and Whitehall,” WR, xlv (1846), 34–55; “Recent Novels: French and English,” Fraser's Mag., xxxvi (1847), 686–695; “Memoir of Sir E. Bulwer Lytton, Bart.,” Bentley's Miscellany, xxiv (1848), 1–10; “Benjamin D'Israeli,” Brit. Quart. Rev., x (1849), 118–138; “Currer Bell's ‘Shirley’,” Edinburgh Rev., xci (1850), 153–173; “Ruth and Villette,” WR, lix (1853), 474–491; “Thackeray's Vanity Fair,” Athenaeum, 12 Aug. 1848, pp. 794–797; “Thackeray,” Leader, 21 Dec. 1850, pp. 929–930, 6 Nov. 1852, pp. 1071–72; “The Whale; or Moby Dick,” Leader, 8 Nov. 1851, pp. 1067–69.

page 997 note 6 For an explication of Lewes' naturalistic philosophy see Jack Kaminsky, “The Empirical Metaphysics of George Henry Lewes,” JHI, xiii (1952), 314–332.

page 997 note 7 The Life of Maximilien Robespierre with Extracts from his Unpublished Correspondence (Philadelphia, 1849), p. 21.

page 997 note 8 WR, lvii, 130; Lewes, Principles of Success in Literature (1865), ed. F. N. Scott, 3rd ed. (Boston, 1894), pp. 19–20, hereafter referred to as Principles. H. A. Needham, Le Développement de l'esthétique sociologique en Prance et en Angleterre au XIXe siècle (Paris, 1926), p. 282, lists Lewes' Principles among his examples of literary studies based upon sociological aesthetics.

page 997 note 9 Rose, Blanche, and Violet (London, 1848), pref., p. iii. See also Lewes, Monthly Mag., vii (1842), 582, in which he speaks of hating the “cant” which asks the moral of a work of art. The question is whether a work of art is true, not whether it is moral.

page 997 note 10 Ranthorpe (Leipzig, 1847); “The Apprenticeship of Life,” Leader, 30 Mar.–8 June 1850. B. C. Williams believes that the name Hetty was taken from Rose, Blanche, and Violet, in which Hester Mason appears as a character who closely resembles Hetty Sorrel. “George Eliot must have … talked with Lewes about Hester Mason” (George Eliot: A Biography, New York, 1936, p. 150).

page 997 note 11 “Criticism in Relation to Novels,” Fortnightly Rev., iii (1865), 361.

page 997 note 12 “The Novels of Jane Austen,” Blackwood's Mag., lXXXVI (1859), 101.

page 997 note 13 Lewes, The Life of Goethe (1855), 4th ed. (London, 1890), p. 513.

page 997 note 14 Lewes, WR, lviii (1852), 130; see also his comment on realism in the Fortnightly Rev., iv (1866), 637.

page 997 note 15 W. Archer and R. W. Lowe, eds. Dramatic Essays: John Forster, George Henry Lewes (London, 1896), p. 242.

page 997 note 16 WR, lxx (1858), 493. See the Leader, 6 Aug. 1853, p. 762.

page 997 note 17 WR, lxx (1858), 493, 494. Cf. the Principles, pp. 82–85.

page 997 note 18 “Shakespeare's Critics: English and Foreign,” Edinburgh Rev., xc (1849), 55.

page 997 note 19 H. C. Warren in his A History of the Association Psychology (New York, 1921), p. 138, points to Lewes' Study of Psychology (1879) as an example of evolutionary associationism at its best “on account of its striking adaptation of the traditional English position to the new results of biological research and to the evolution theory.”

page 997 note 29 “The Rise and Fall of the European Drama,” Foreign Quart. Ren., xxxv (1845), 328.

page 997 note 21 Blackwood's Mag., lxxxvi (1859), 109. Lewes is not enthusiastic about George Bor-row's novels because they are devoid of genuine philosophic insight. See the Athenaeum, 8 and 15 Feb. 1851, pp. 159–160, 188–190.

page 997 note 22 Blackwood's Mag., lxxxvi (1859), 101–102; Principles, p. 138.

page 997 note 23 Leader, 8 Nov. 1851, p. 1067; A. T. Kitchel, George Lewes and George Eliot: A Review of Records (New York, 1933), p. 106.

page 997 note 24 “A Word about Tom Jones,” Blackwood's Mag., lxxxvii (1860), 331–341; Edinburgh Rev., xci (1850), 153–173; Westminster Rev., lix (1853), 474–491; “Dickens in Relation to Criticism,” Fortnightly Rev., xvii (1872), 141–154; Leader, 2l Dec. 1850, pp. 929–930.

page 997 note 25 J. W. Cross, ed. George Eliot's Life as Related in her Letters and Journals (Edinburgh and London, Cabinet Ed. [1885]), i, 210. Subsequent references to this edition will be incorporated into the text.

page 997 note 26 Willey (p. 245) credits Lewes with propounding in advance of his time in “The Lady Novelists” “a psychoanalytic theory of artistic creation, that it is a resolution of, and compensation for, the artist's inward conflicts and dissatisfactions.” Willey is here repeating Bourl'honne‘s view, but they both seem to read more into Lewes’ remarks than is warranted. Whether Lewes conceived of all of literature as a cathartic release from suffering is not made explicit in his criticism. He discussed the influence of sorrow in relation to certain subjective writers such as George Sand and Charlotte Brontë, but not with regard to an objective artist like Jane Austen. After all, Lewes said only that “almost all literature has some remote connexion with suffering” (WR, lviii [1852], 133).

page 997 note 27 WR, lxvi (1856), 442–461. George Eliot was as merciless in her satire of several ridiculous novels as Lewes in his criticism of worthless books. Cf. Lewes' remark in the Leader, 27 Sept. 1851, p. 925, where he notes that Lady Dormer in her novel Lady Selina Clifford “has nothing to say—and says it.”

page 997 note 28 Fraser's Mag., xxxvi, 691. See also F. Gary, “Charlotte Brontë and George Henry Lewes,” PMLA, li (1936), 518–542. In the WR, lviii (1852), 139, Lewes distinguishes between the legitimate and illegitimate employment of experience: “The author is bound to use actual experience as his material, or else to keep silent; but he is equally bound by all moral and social considerations not to use that experience in such forms that the public will recognise it.…”

page 997 note 29 Cross, New ed. (Edinburgh and London [1887]), p. 476.

page 997 note 30 “The Development of George Eliot's Ethical and Social Theories,” unpubl. diss. (Univ. of Chicago, 1934), p. 51.

page 997 note 31 “The Influence of Contemporary Criticism on George Eliot,” SP, xxx (1933), 107.

page 997 note 32 Williams, George Eliot, p. 99.

page 997 note 33 Hanson, Marian Evans, p. 142.

page 997 note 34 Studies in the Mental Development of George Eliot (Tokyo, 1931), p. 232.

page 997 note 35 Les Idées morales et religieuses de George Eliot (Paris, 1927), p. 79.

page 997 note 36 G. Bullett, George Eliot: Her Life and Books (New Haven, 1948), p. 205.