Reviews - Books I Read - DRJG: October 2021

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Complete Works of George Eliot,

by George Eliot.

Delphi Classics

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The Criticism

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The Ethics Of George Eliot's Works,

by John Crombie Brown.

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As one begins reading its very moving to know about the author striving to write, dictate, and finish this work, dying only two days later.

Until one begins to read it further. It's perplexing at first, why he goes on like a missionary attempting to convert, or a bishop of Rome thundering at Galileo, with an insistence about crose being the only possibility of salvation and the church, no matter how corrupt, the only way. Is the church supposed to own his divine? Surely the idea is not that his god is imprisoned by church, so the world us blackmailed to hand over souls?

Then one reads of his approval of inquisition.

Anyone who approved of any form of slavery, of power of a human or an institution over another, isn't of interest as a mind or soul- and one flavours to finish the book, only because one has begun, which was only because it was part of a complete collection of works of George Eliot.

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Most touching.

"PREFACE."

"The greater part of the following Essay was written several years ago. It was too long for any of the periodicals to which the author had been in the habit of occasionally contributing, and no thought was then entertained of publishing it in a separate form. One day, however, during his last illness, the talk happened to turn on George Eliot’s Works, and he mentioned his long-forgotten paper. One of the friends then present—a competent critic and high literary authority—expressed a wish to see it, and his opinion was so favourable that its publication was determined on. The author then proposed to complete his work by taking up ‘Middlemarch’ and ‘Deronda’; and if any trace of failing vigour is discernible in these latter pages, the reader will bear in mind that the greater portion of them was composed when the author was rapidly sinking under a painful disease, and that the concluding paragraphs were dictated to his daughter after the power of writing had failed him, only five days before his death."

Most touching, that this is what someone chose to do, knowing his end is close! It wasn't even an artist finishing his own work, but merely a critic - and however important the critique, it doesn't compare with last moments of life. Not when one knows it to be so.

"PREFACE TO THIRD EDITION."

"It is a source of great gratification to the friends of the author that his little volume has already been so well received that the second edition has been out of print for some time. In now publishing a third, they have been influenced by two considerations—the continued demand for the book, and the favourable opinion expressed of it by “George Eliot” herself, which, since her lamented death, delicacy no longer forbids them to make public.

"In a letter to her friend and publisher, the late Mr. John Blackwood, received soon after the appearance of the first edition, she writes, with reference to certain passages: “They seemed to me more penetrating and finely felt than almost anything I have read in the way of printed comments on my own writings.” Again, in a letter to a friend of the author, she says: “When I read the volume in the summer, I felt as if I had been deprived of something that should have fallen to my share in never having made his personal acquaintance. And it would have been a great benefit—a great stimulus to me to have known some years earlier that my work was being sanctioned by the sympathy of a mind endowed with so much insight and delicate sensibility. It is difficult for me to speak of what others may regard as an excessive estimate of my own work, but I will venture to mention the keen perception shown in the note on page 29, as something that gave me peculiar satisfaction.”

"Once more. In an article in the ‘Contemporary Review’ of last month, on “The Moral Influence of George Eliot,” by “One who knew her,” the writer says: “It happens that the only criticism which we have heard mentioned as giving her pleasure, was a little posthumous volume published by Messrs Blackwood.”

"With such testimony in its favour, it is hoped a third edition will not be thought uncalled for.

"March 1881."

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" ... The older Theosophies and Philosophies—Gymnosophist and Cynic, Chaldaic and Pythagorean, Epicurean and Stoic, Platonist and Eclectic—were all attempts to embody it in teaching, and to carry it out in life. They saw, indeed, but imperfectly, and their expressions of the truth are all one-sided and inadequate. But they did see, in direct antagonism alike to the popular view and to the natural instinct of the animal man, that what is ordinarily called happiness does not represent the highest capability in humanity, or meet its indefinite aspirations; and that in degree as it is consciously made so, life becomes animalised and degraded. ... "

Greek vs U.S. post WWII?

" ... The whole scheme of Judaism, as first promulgated in all the stern simplicity of its awful Theism, where the Divine is fundamentally and emphatically represented as the Omnipotent and the Avenger, was an emphatic protest against that self-isolation in which the man folds himself up like a chrysalid in its cocoon whenever his individual happiness—the so-called saving of his own soul—becomes the aim and aspiration of his life. In one sense the Jew of Moses had no individual as apart from a national existence. The secret sin of Achan, the vaunting pride of David, call forth less individual than national calamity."

Here's the authors declaration of his identity.

"By every act He did, every word He spoke, and every pain He bore, He put away from Him happiness as the aim and end of man. He reduced it to its true position of a possible accessory and issue of man’s highest fulfilment of life—an issue, the contemplation of which might be of some avail as the being first awoke to its nobler capabilities, but which, the more the life went on towards realisation, passed the more away from conscious regard.

"Thenceforth the Cross, as the typical representation of this truth, became a recognised power on the earth. Thenceforth every great teacher of humanity within the pale of nominal Christendom, whatever his apparent tenets or formal creed, has been, in degree as he was great and true, explicitly or implicitly the expounder of this truth; every great and worthy life, in degree as it assimilated to that ideal life, has been the practical embodiment of it. “Endure hardness,” said one of its greatest apostles and martyrs, “as good soldiers of Christ.” And to the endurance of hardness; to the recognition of something in humanity to which what we ordinarily call life and all its joys are of no account; to the abnegation of mere happiness as aim or end—to this the world of Christendom thenceforth became pledged, if it would not deny its Head and trample on His cross."

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Most of it from here on for several pages, is conversionist diatribe.

" ... One of the sternest and most consistent of Calvinistic theologians, Jonathan Edwards, in one of his works expresses his willingness to be damned for the glory of God, and to rejoice in his own damnation: with a strange, almost incredible, obliquity of moral and spiritual insight failing to perceive that in thus losing himself in the infinite of holy Love lies the very essence of human blessedness, that this and this alone is in very truth his “eternal life.”"

He goes on, naming various authors and their works.

"Those who read works of fiction merely for amusement, may be surprised that it should be thought possible they could be vehicles for conveying to us the deepest practical truth of Christianity—that the highest life of man only begins when he begins to accept and to bear the Cross; and that the conscious pursuit of happiness as his highest aim tends inevitably to degrade and enslave him. Even those who read novels more thoughtfully, who recognise in them a great moral force acting for good or evil on the age, may be startled to find George Eliot put forward as the representative of this higher-toned fiction, and as entitled to take place beside any of those we have named for the depth and force, the consistency and persistence, with which she has laboured to set before us the Christian, and therefore the only exhaustively true, ideal of life."

The author now proceeds to exalt various works of George Eliot, as examples of his own religious ideal.

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Here's the arrogance of a conversionist -

" ... Only in the earlier dawn of this higher life of the soul, either in the race or in the individual man; only in the days of the Isaacs and Jacobs of our young humanity, though not with the Abrahams, the Moses’, or the Joshuas even then; only when the soul first begins to apprehend that its true relation to God is to be realised only through the Cross—is there conscience and habitual “respect unto the recompense” of any reward."

Authir now picks, one after another, various works of George Eliot, beginning with adam Bede.

"In ‘Adam Bede,’ the first of George Eliot’s more elaborate works, the illustrations of the great moral purpose we have assigned to her are so numerous and varied, that it is not easy to select from among them. On the one hand, Dinah Morris—one of the most exquisitely serene and beautiful creations of fiction—and Seth and Adam Bede present to us, variously modified, the aspect of that life which is aiming toward the highest good. On the other hand, Arthur Donnithorne and Hetty Sorrel—poor little vain and shallow-hearted Hetty—bring before us the meanness, the debasement, and, if unarrested, the spiritual and remediless death inevitably associated with and accruing from that “self-pleasing” which, under one form or other, is the essence of all evil and sin. Of these, Arthur Donnithorne and Adam Bede seem to us the two who are most sharply and subtilely contrasted; and to these we shall confine our remarks."

Would he remark on how, nevertheless, it was the young poor girl, not the rich landlord, who suffered for his having taken advantage of her hopes, her youth, her fascination with his persona? Doubt it. Punishing women is easy, as murdering slaves was, and only slavery is on its way out, not victimisation of weak by not so weak.

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"Arthur, too, is suddenly called to confront the misery and ruin he has wrought; but in him, self then loses its ascendancy. There is no attempt to plead that he was the tempted as much as the tempter; and no care now as to what others shall think or say about him. All thought is for the wretched Hetty; and all energy is concentrated on the one present object, of arresting so far as it can be arrested the irremediable loss to her. The wrong stands up before him in its own nakedness as a wrong. This is repentance; and with repentance restoration becomes possible and begins."

So while Hetty is legally executed, because being too young and too poor and not married, she couldn't keep her baby alive as she walked through forest in cold - Arthur is not only legally scot free and socially blameless, but free to rise to Christian heaven because he repented? Did Hetty have that choice, of redeeming her life, even? Enclosing half humanity like sheep, and butcher a frolicking lamb for being out in cold, is religion?

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"Adam Bede contrasts at nearly every point with Arthur Donnithorne. Lovable is nearly the last epithet we think of applying to him. Hard almost to cruelty toward his sinning father; hard almost to contemptuousness toward his fond, foolish mother; bitterly hard toward his young master and friend, on the first suspicion of personal wrong; savagely vindictive, long and fiercely unforgiving, when he knows that wrong accomplished;—these may well seem things irreconcilable with any true fulfilment of that Christian life whose great law is love. Yet, examined more narrowly, they approve themselves as nearly associated with the larger fulness of that life. They are born of the same spirit which said of old, “Woe unto you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!” fulfilments, howsoever imperfect, of that true and deep “law of resentment” which modern sentimentalism has all but expunged from the Christian code. The hardness is essentially against the wrong-doing, not against the doer of it; and against it rather as it affects others than as it burdens, worries, or overshadows his own life. It subsists in and springs from the intensity with which, in a nature robust and energetic in no ordinary degree, right and wrong have asserted themselves as the realities of existence. Even Seth can be more tolerant than Adam, because the gentle, placid moral beauty of his nature is, so far as this may ever be, the result of temperament; while in Adam whatever has been attained has been won through inward struggle and self-conquest."

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"‘Silas Marner,’ though carefully finished, is of slighter character than any of the author’s later works, and does not require lengthened notice. ... "

This guy, the author, really isn't happy unless there's misery and death all around, is he! Silas Marner is the only work of George Eliot where a reader might be on the whole not disappointed quite as much, although there could, should, have been a better solution, such as the squire not only giving the daughter her rights, but also giving Silas Marner his, for being wronged by the brother, and for having been a wonderful father to his daughter. But no, the author - John Crombie Brown - is disappointed it's not all around disaster like other works of George Eliot.

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Suddenly Brown surprises us with his perception, speaking of a character no other critic talks of, but one that takes a reader's sympathy and more.

"Harold, we believe, is not a general favourite with the modern public, any more than he was with his own contemporaries. He has none of those lovablenesses which make Arthur Donnithorne so attractive; and at first sight nothing of that uncompromising sense of right which characterises Adam Bede. He comes before us apparently no more than a clearheaded, hard, shrewd, successful man of the world, greatly alive to his own interests and importance, and with no particular principles to boast of.

"How does it come that this man, when over and over again, in great things and in small, two paths lie before him to choose, always chooses the truer and better of the two? When Felix attempts to interfere in the conduct of his election, even while resenting the interference as impertinent, he sets himself honestly to attempt to arrest the wrong. He buys Christian’s secret; but it is to reveal it to her whom it enables, if so she shall choose, to dislodge himself from the position which has been the great object of his desires and efforts. By simply allowing the trial and sentence of Felix to take their course, he would, to all appearance, strengthen the possibility that by marriage to Esther his position shall be maintained, with the further joy of having that “white new-winged dove” thenceforth by his side. He comes forward as witness on behalf of Felix, and gives his evidence fairly, truly, and in such guise as makes it tell most favourably for the accused, and at the same time against himself; and, last and most touching of all, it is after he knows the full depth of the humiliation in which his mother’s sin has for life involved him, that his first exhibition of tenderness, sympathy, and confidence towards that poor stricken heart and blighted life comes forth. How comes it that this “well-tanned man of the world” thus always chooses the higher and more difficult right; and does this in no excitement or enthusiasm, but coolly, calculatingly, with clear forecasting of all the consequences, and fairly entitled to assume that these shall be to his own peril or detriment?"

" ... There is an inherent strength and manliness in Harold Transome to which Arthur Donnithorne or Godfrey Cass can never attain."

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"Few things in the literary history of the age are more puzzling than the reception given to ‘Romola’ by a novel-devouring public. That the lovers of mere sensationalism should not have appreciated it, was to be fully expected. But to probably the majority of readers, even of average intelligence and capability, it was, and still is, nothing but a weariness. With the more thoughtful, on the other hand, it took at once its rightful place, not merely as by far the finest and highest of all the author’s works, but as perhaps the greatest and most perfect work of fiction of its class ever till then produced."

Very surprising, both. What's more sensational than Romola? As to that praise, well, if one likes that sort of stuff!

"One of the most touching manifestations in this most touching of all records of feminine nobleness and suffering, is the story of her relations to Tessa. It would seem as if in that large heart jealousy, the reaching self-love of love, could find no place. Her discovery of the relation in which Tessa stands to Tito awakens first that saddest of all sad hopes in one like Romola, that through the contadina she may be released from the marriage-bond that so galls and darkens her life. When that hope is gone, no thought of Tessa as a successful rival presents itself. She thinks of her only as another victim of Tito’s wrong-doing—as a weak, simple, helpless child, innocent of all conscious fault, to be shielded and cared for in the hour of need."

Brown doesn't get it. Romola wasn't emotionally involved any more with Tito, had only contempt for him, perhaps never did have any respect for him because he hadn't earned it, so there was no possessive instinct, much less jealousy or loss. Besides, she'd forsaken him, even though she returned home, and Tessa's actual relationship began only after that. Tito had loved, wanted, revered Romola, and wouldn't have touched Tessa if he hadn't lost Romola. It isn't about Romola's spirituality, it's about her never having experienced being possessed by love within. But then, which heroine of George Eliot was?

" ... “The cause of my party,” says Savonarola, “is the cause of God’s kingdom.” “I do not believe it,” is the reply of Romola’s “passionate repugnance.” “God’s kingdom is something wider, else let me stand without it with the beings that I love.” These words tell us the secret of Savonarola’s gathering weakness and of Romola’s strength. Self, under the subtle form of identifying truth and right with his own party—with his own personal judgment of the cause and the course of right—has so far led him astray from the straight onward path. Right, in its clear, calm, direct simplicity, has become to her supreme above what is commonly called salvation itself."

No, it's George Eliot who lacked courage to indict church for inquisition, and so the work is a horrible travesty of what it ought to have been, in depicting Florence and Savonarola; so might someone writing before council of Nicea have written about crucifixion as a proof of fall of the leader, glorifying Roman empire as just; George Eliot lacks courage to investigate occult phenomenon, to seek to understand Savonarola, and hence keeps herself safe from denouncing a powerful institution that ran rampant burning every opposition, every sign of greatness at stake.

As for Brown, he states over and over again that church is right despite all wrongs and corruptions. So might a German have spoken during pre WWII years about his nation's government, and often still would if they thought it safe. And so indeed did George Eliot write about British empire running amok looting and killing people of other lands.

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"It is another agency than Savonarola’s now that brings her back once more to take up the full burden of her cross. She goes forth not knowing or heeding whither she goes, “drifting away” unconscious before wind and wave. These bear her into the midst of terror, suffering, and death; and there, in self-devotedness to others, in patient ministrations of love amid poverty, ignorance, and superstition, the noble spirit rights itself once more, the weary fainting heart regains its quiet steadfastness. She knows once more that no amount of wrong-doing can dissolve the bond uniting her to Tito; that no degree of pain may lawfully drive her forth from that sphere of doing and suffering which is hers. She returns, not in joy or hope, but in that which is deeper than all joy and hope—in love; the one thought revealed to us being that it may be her blessedness to stand by him whose baseness drove her away when suffering and loss have come upon him. ... "

Wrong again. Romola isn't returning to love, or for love, and Tito has nothing to do with it. Florence is where her home is, which is what she returned to, not love or marriage. Tito lives in the house, and has some legal rights, but is gentleman enough not to demand or force her. If he left, she would be neither devastated nor follow.

But it's clear why the plague interlude was inserted - it's simply that George Eliot lacked courage to depict the struggle of Savonarola, and how, from pinnacle of strength, he was brought down to being burnt at stake. Whether showing the political machinations of the church, or understanding the occult forces, it would have taken an inner journey of consciousness that would need courage in being institutionally independent of church. This George Eliot lacked.

If she had, ironically enough, she might have understood the figure Brown repeatedly refers to as the reason church must be followed "because it's only through church" that he can gave access to his object of worship, as if it were a physical object, such as a specific stone!

Or does he mean it in the sense of having to enter a cave filled with snakes because that's the only spot he can find salvation?

Anyway, if she'd understood Savonarola and his struggle and why he lost, perhaps she'd have understood why someone crucified cried out "why hast thou forsaken me?", if that story gas any truth to it.

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" ... Tito is gone to his place: and his baseness shall vex her no more with antagonistic duties and a divided life. There is no joy, no expressed sense of relief and release; no reproach of him other than that implied one which springs out of the necessities of her being, the putting away from her, quietly and unobtrusively, the material gains of his treasons. The poor innocent wrong-doer, Tessa, is sought for, rescued, and cared for; and is never allowed to know the foul wrong to her rescuer of which she has been made the unconscious instrument. Even to her the language is that “Naldo will return no more, not because he is cruel, but because he is dead.”"

What "antagonistic duties and a divided life"? George Eliot has clearly given to understand that Tito sensitive enough and treating Romola with respect, no longer expected intimacy of marital relations. Being officially his widow isn't going to wash off stains of his past conduct, if any.

And as for Brown referring to Tessa as "poor innocent wrong-doer, Tessa", what could be more disgusting? George Eliot has been most meticulous in portraying how Tessa came to believe she was married, how she never learned she wasn't, and more; f anything, she was not merely innocent, she was wronged, much as Brown might if he'd been sold stolen goods. But no, of course he has to brand her, because she's a woman. Would he brand a man who turned out tricked by his wife never having told him if a previous marriage? Not likely.

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"The one purer feeling in that corrupt heart — his love for Romola — is almost from the first tainted by the same selfishness. From the first he recognises that his relation to her will give him a certain position in the city; and he feels that with his ready tact and Greek suppleness this is all that is needed to secure his further advancement. The vital antagonism between his nature and hers bars the possibility of his foreseeing how her truthfulness, nobleness, and purity shall become the thorn in his ease-loving life."

There's that racism again, a English contempt for Greek! Ease loving? Did he not read the book, or does he just ignore the hardships of the orphan boy till he arrived in Florence? And caste feeling too, in this contempt for Tito, as one without a noble father! Moreover, why this ignoring, nit resoecting, the love Tito had for Romola? Or does ge deserve such contempt only due to marrying a daughter of what is impoverished gentry, despite being orphan- unless the contempt is based really on race, and Greek are seen as lesser than Italian?

" ... Long before the end comes, we feel that Tito Melema is a lost soul; that for him and in him there is no place for repentance; that to him we may without any uncharity apply the most fearful words human language has ever embodied; — he has sinned the “sin which cannot be forgiven, neither in this world, neither in the world to come.”"

It's nothing of the sort. Would brown dare condemn Henry the VIIIth for all the debauchery, murders, and more? No, Tito is easy to condemn falsely, because he's an orphan and a stranger,from another land, succeeding due to his wits and personality, despite lacking being backed by a wealthy or aristocratic father and property. Its the same reason he is betrayed, and killed. He's an average man, nothing more, apart from looks and wits and the amiability he had to acquire to survive despite being an orphan. Amongst the men he's mixing with, there are many just as self loving - who isn't! - and lacking his wits, but owning property and of known genealogy, and hence not considered sinners.

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"Few of the great figures which stand up amid the dimness of medieval history are more perplexing to historian and biographer than Savonarola. On a first glance we seem shut up to one or other of two alternatives — regarding him as an apostle and martyr, or as a charlatan. And even more careful examination leaves in his character and life anomalies so extraordinary, contradictions so inextricable, that most historians have fallen back on the hypothesis of partial insanity — the insanity born of an honest and upright but extravagant fanaticism — as the only one adequate to explain the mystery. ... "

What choice did they have? Unlike Luther, Calvin, or Henry the VIII th, Savonarola was burnt at stake, and unlike Jean D'Arc, never restored to sainthood; so without sanction from church West dare not recognise his greatness, and really proceed to place him where he belonged, somewhere amongst those, recognised by church or otherwise, of occult power used for good - including perhaps one they worship, if that story isn't an outright lie. But certainly with Jean D'Arc, Bernadette and other similar ones.

"The great Monk-prophet comes upon the scene a new “voice crying in the wilderness”of selfishness and wrong around him —an impassioned witness that “there is a God that judgeth in the earth,”protesting by speech and by life against the self-seeking and self-pleasing he sees on every side. To the putting down of this, to the living his own life, to the rousing all men to live theirs, not to pleasure, but to God; merging all private interests in the public good, and that the best good; looking each one not to his own pleasures, ambition, or ease, but to that which shall best advance a reign of truth, justice, and love on earth, —to this end he has consecrated himself and all his powers. The path thus chosen is for himself a hard one; circumstanced as our humanity is, it never has been otherwise —never shall be so while these heavens and this earth remain. Mere personal self-denials, mere turning away from the outward pomps and vanities of the world, lie very lightly on a nature like Savonarola’s, and such things scarcely enter into the pain and hardness of his chosen lot. It is the opposition, —active, in the intrigues and machinations of enemies both in Church and State —passive, in the dull cold hearts that respond so feebly and fitfully to his appeals; it is the constant wearing bitterness of hope deferred, the frequent still sterner bitterness of direct disappointment, —it is things like these that make his cross so heavy to bear. ... "

Whether Brown, George Eliot or any other in West, they dare not acknowledge his truth, and hence dare not face it, without church sanction; if they did, they'd face opposition from church, as well as from science and rationalist, materialistic communities. What choice have they but picture him as a do-gooder who failed politically by opposing church? The power he had over people wasn't oratory, and the reason his figure stands tall despite being victim of church, isn't trivial.

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Brown quotes beautiful lines from end of The Spanish Gypsy -

"“Straining he gazed, and knew not if he gazed

"On aught but blackness overhung with stars”—"

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" ... as we have passed without notice the powerful embodiment in Father Isidor of whatever was true and earnest in the Inquisition, ... "

Seriously, Brown says "true and earnest in the Inquisition"?????

As in seeking to terrorise the populace into complete submission, with no right to inquiry, much less knowledge?

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"In the next of this series of great works, and the one which to many of her readers is and will remain the most fascinating —‘Middlemarch’— George Eliot has stretched a broader and more crowded canvas, on which, however, every figure, to the least important that appears, is — not sketched or outlined, but — filled in with an intense and lifelike vividness and precision that makes each stand out as if it stood there alone. Quote but a few words from any one of the speakers, and we know in a moment who that speaker is. And each is the type or representative of a class; we have no monsters or unnatural creations among them. To a certain extent all are idealised for good or for evil, — it cannot be otherwise in fiction without its ceasing to be fiction; but the essential elements of character and life in all are not peculiar to them, but broad and universal as our humanity itself. Dorothea and her sister, Mr Brooke and Sir James Chettam, Rosamond Vincy and her brother, Mr Vincy and his wife, Casaubon and Lydgate, Farebrother and Ladislaw, Mary Garth and her parents, Bulstrode and Raffles, even Drs Sprague and Minchin, old Featherstone and his kindred — all are but representative men and women, with whose prototypes every reader, if gifted with the subtle power of penetration and analysis of George Eliot, might claim personal acquaintance."

"Jealousy, in some degree, presupposes love; love not wholly absorbed in self, but capable to some extent of going forth from our own mean and sordid self-inclusion in sympathetic relation, dependence, and aid, towards another existence. In Mr Casaubon there is no capability, no possibility of this. What in him wears the aspect of jealousy is simply and solely self-love, callous irritation, that any one should —not stand above, but —approach himself in importance with the woman he has purchased as a kind of superior slave. For long her guileless innocence and purity, her utter inability to conceive such a feeling, leaves her only in doubt and perplexity before it; long after it has first betrayed itself, she reveals this incapability in the fullest extent, and in the way most intensely irritating to her husband’s self-love —by her simple-hearted proposal that whatever of his property would devolve on her should be shared with Ladislaw. Then it is that Casaubon is roused to inflict on her the last long and bitter anguish; to lay on her for life —had not death intervened —the cold, soul-benumbing, life contracting clutch of “the Dead Hand.” ... The agonised assent is to be given; but it falls on the ear of the dead."

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And heres exposed, again, the limited, narrow and ignorant mind of a racist, unfamiliar with any other philosophy or thought except that imposed by church, at pains of subjection to inquisition and burning at stake, for centuries.

" ... But it is not from these, or such as these, that the highest and noblest, the purest and most penetrative, the most extended and enduring teaching and elevation of the world has come. That has come emphatically from Him whose self-chosen name, “the Son of Man,” designates Him the ideal of humanity on earth; Him who is at once the “Lamb of God” and “the Lion of the tribe of Judah,” the “Good Shepherd,” and the stern and fearless but ever-righteous Judge — the concentration of all tender and holy love, and of divinest scorn of, and revulsion from, everything mean and false in humanity; Him who for the repentant sinner has no harsher word of rebuke than “Go and sin no more,” and who over the self-righteous, self-wrapt, all-despising Pharisees thundered back, to His own ultimate destruction, His terrible “Woe unto you hypocrites.” ... "

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"In wonderfully drawn and finished yet never obtruded contrast to this beautiful creation comes before us Rosamond Vincy. Outwardly even more characterised by every personal charm, save that one living and crowning charm which outshines from the soul within; to the eye, therefore — such eyes as can penetrate no deeper than the surface — prettier, more graceful, more accomplished and fascinating, than Dorothea Brooke; — it is difficult to conceive a more utterly unlovable example of womanhood, whether as maiden or wife. ... "

Goodness, this guy is stupid! Doesn't he realise he's reacting to a finished portrait of a lifetime of the character in the book, dissected and exposed thoroughly by George Eliot? And that average women and men are just precisely of this nature, Rosamond Vincy of Middlemarch, and Tito Melema of Romola, but without their charm or beauty, and in case of Tito, his wits, amiability, and innate gentlemanliness in refraining from asserting his rights, his will, or anything of himself over his wife, who has been his love?

" ... The fundamental character of her entire home relations is, on her first appearance, drawn by a single delicate touch — her objecting to her brother’s red herring, or rather to its presence after she enters the room, because its odour jars on her sense of pseudo-refinement. ... "

Is this expectations from women as merely creatures born to slavery, or would he have tolerated members of his household come into his presence - say, in his study - reeking of liquor and onions?

" ... In her relation to her husband there is not from first to last one shadow of anything that can be called love, no approach to sympathy or harmony of life. She looks on him solely as a means for removing herself to what she considers a higher social circle, securing to her greater ease, freedom, and luxury of daily life, and ultimately withdrawing her to a wider sphere of petty and selfish enjoyment. Seeking these ends, she resorts to every mean device of deceit and concealment. Utterly callous and impenetrable to his feelings, to every manlier instinct within him, as she is utterly insensible of, and indeed incapable of, entering into his higher and wider professional aims, she not only ignores these, but in her dull and hard insensibility runs counter to, and tramples on them all."

Again, Brown is judging from the final point, and unfairly. She is merely normal, average young woman, bestowed with beauty of a very high degree, with very little education or other opening of inner being; she wishes a life at least at the level she's used to having, and a man she can look up to; that's neither abnormal nor criminal. She's unfortunate in meeting, and not only wanting, but getting, someone far higher in his aspirations, capabilities and aim, and not so much in his financial strength, acumen or aims. She would be, and is, quite happy when he accepts life of an average doctor treating rich patients, and has no clue it caused him to die within. She's no villain; it's misfortune for them both to not have realised, due to neither having made clear what each expected, how very unsuitable they were. Most peopl,e when courting, don't do so. Tragedies such as this are avoided only because mist people are average. Rosamond was quite happy with her second husband, an average man.

................................................................................................

" ... Anon comes his marriage to Rosamond Vincy, — a marriage prompted by no true affection, but solely by the fascination of her prettiness, her external grace and accomplishments. ... "

How many people can afford to wait to find, and ascertain, "true affection", even if it was as obvious as an object sold in a grocery shop, all labeled clearly? When a young man must find and propose, and a young woman wait to be asked and decide about acceptan9or rejection every time, without a clue about alternatives, they do their best in the blind poker game.

" ... and at last in the all but universal estimation of his fellows, and nearly in his own, in the hope of temporary relief he becomes accessory to murder. ... "

It could only be called murder if it was a deliberate act committed with full knowledge of a certain end; it wasn't even an assault, but a refraining from care required, and that was not committed by Lydgate, but Bulstrode whom Lydgate had informed about possible results of such action. That the village assumed it was murdered with collusion by doctor, wasn't because it was so, but because it seemed likely under the circumstances, whereby the death of a blackmailer suited Bulstrode and his benevolence was needed by Lydgate.

Brown never opened his eyes, even to the very explicit and extensive writing of George Eliot, much less to other, deeper realities, but inferred whatever suitable from anything.

................................................................................................

"There now only remains the last yet published, and in the estimation of many, the greatest, of George Eliot’s works —‘Daniel Deronda.’ ... "

And here's antisemitism of West, without any suspicion that it is far from holy or righteous.

" Before, however, proceeding to detailed examination of this remarkable work, it seems necessary to draw attention to one objection which has been urged against it — the prominent introduction of the Jewish element into its scheme. Such objection could scarcely have been put forward by any one who considers what the Jew has been in the past — what an enormous factor 2his past and present have been and are, in the development and progress of our highest civilisation. Historically, we first meet him coming forth from the Arabian desert, a rude unlettered herdsman, in intelligence, cultivation, and morality far below the tribes among whom he is thrown. ... "

Was brown unaware of just how very uncivilised Europe was, while Asia and Egypt were far more advanced?

................................................................................................

And more of ignorant racism from those of low intelligence -

" ... To the Psalms so-called of David, the glorious outbursts of sacred song in their mythico-historical books, as in Isaiah and some of the minor prophets, the finest of the Vedic or Orphic hymns or the Homeric ballads are cold and spiritless. ... "

................................................................................................

"Eighteen centuries have passed since they became a people, “scattered and peeled,” their “holy and beautiful house” a ruin, their capital a desolation, their land proscribed to the exile’s foot. During these centuries deluge after deluge of so-called barbarians has swept over Asia and Europe: Hun and Tartar, Alan and Goth, Suev and Vandal, — we attach certain vague meanings to the names, but can the most learned scholar identify one individual of the true unmingled blood? All have disappeared, merged in 5the race they overran, in the kingdoms they conquered and devastated. The Jew alone, through these centuries, has remained the Jew: proscribed, persecuted, hunted as never was tiger or wolf, he is as vividly defined, as unchangeably national, as when he stood alone, everywhere without and beyond the despised and hated Gentile. And this intense and conservative nationality springs essentially out of the central conception of Judaism, “God is one.”

And here's more racism from Brown, with more abuse of others based in hatred, ignorance and the power play that was inquisition.

"Through those long ages of darkness, devil-worship, and polytheism (in its grossest forms all around), the Jew stood up in unfaltering protest against all."

Presumably that includes, not only Asia and Africa, Egypt and India and China and Japan, but Greece and Rome, Germany and France, Celts and Druids?

" ... Persecutions, proscriptions, tortures in every form, were of no avail. On the gibbet, on the rack, amid the flames, his last words embodied the central confession of Judaism, “O Israel, the Lord thy God is one Lord.” Christianity, the appointed custodier of the still more central truth, “God is love,” had to all appearance failed of its mission; had not only merged its higher message in a theistic presentation, dark and terroristic as that of Judaism at its dawn, but had absorbed into 6its scheme, under other names, the gods many who swarm all around it; till nowhere and never, save by some soul upborne by its own fervour above these dense fogs and mists, could individual man meet his God face to face, and realise that higher life of the soul which is His free gift to all who seek it. Between this heathenised Christianity and Judaism, the contrast was the sharpest, the contest the most embittered and unvarying. Elsewhere we hear of times of toleration and indulgence even for the hunted Monotheist, — in medieval Christendom, never. ... "

An honest admission there, but for omission of specific names blanked under that "Elsewhere" - it was only in India and China that Jews were not persecuted, and only in India they survived with their identity, worship and religious tradition intact. In China they got absorbed, unlike anywhere else. One of the first resolutions in the Knesset of Israel was to thank India.

More ignorance from Brown, even as he admits to some facts -

" ... The Inquisition plied its rack for the Jews with a more fiendish zeal than even for the hated Morisco. The mob held him responsible for plague and famine; and kings and nobles hounded the mob on to indiscriminate massacre. The Jew lived on through it all, —lived, multiplied, and prospered, and became more and more emphatically the Jew. Is it too much to say that in the West in particular, where this contrast and contest were keenest, Judaism was, during these long ages of terror and darkness, the great conservator of the vital truth of the Divine unity, under whatever forms science or philosophy may now attempt to define this; and in being so, became the conservator of that thought, without the vivifying power of which, howsoever imperfectly apprehended, all human advance is impossible? ... "

Next sends a shiver.

" ... Is it exaggerating the importance of the Jew and his intense nationality, based on such a truth, to say that, but for his presence, “scattered and 7peeled,” among all nations, the Europe we now know could not have been? And this indestructible nationality, for whose existence miracle has been called into account — has it no significance in the future equal to what it has had in the past? There seems an impression that the Jew is being absorbed by other races. We hear much of relaxing Judaisms; of rituals and beliefs assimilating to those around them; of peculiarities being laid aside, that have withstood the wear and tear of centuries. The inference is sought to be drawn that the Jew is beginning to feel his isolation, and to sink his own national life amid that among which he dwells. ... "

Well, antisemitism of Europe did remain strong, not allowing Jews to assimilate almost anywhere throughout Europe, except - it was said - Germany; and then the nazis took care of that. But the doctrine - not antisemitism, but racial superiority - that nazism was based on, was itself from England! The very beginning of William Shirer's most famous work, Rise And Fall of The Third Reich, surprises as with thus information, of English worship of German superiority over all humanity!

" ... But it seems the reverse of strange that a genius like George Eliot’s should have been powerfully attracted by this problem; and that, in one of her noblest works, she should have very prominently addressed herself to at least a partial solution of it. ... "

Indeed, George Eliot does seem strongly against any assimilation of Jews in ambient society, even as a separate group, and she's not too subtly indicated an aversion to interfaith, interracial marriage, especially in this work.

Throughout the book Daniel Deronda shadows Gwendolyn, not stalking but always there, but he must abandon her just when she needed him most, and that's more than once; the last and final time, knowingly so. It's all very well justifying it by claiming he loved Mirah, but throughout the work it only comes across as charity to Mirah when he helps her, unlike his bond with Gwendolyn that's based on the same fascination and domination that's depicted between Felix Holt and Esther.

Incidentally the common factor in both is the not happy ending - somehow one has been led to see the growing love of Harold Transome for Esther, and to will it to succeed, to a flowering of the family, estate, land and more, just as one has been led to expect a final admission of love between Gwendolyn and Daniel, and a happy ending. But no, there's an incredible violent break, and off they go to mate elsewhere. And this is true, too, of The Spanish Gypsy. Their love has been proclaimed and asserted, but they are required to sacrifice their lives and love to this racial war that was glorified, and he made to be ashamed of loving a Gypsy, she made to leave Europe with her people!

It's a tragedy, not a sacrifice to a "higher ideal" as Brown proclaims. But then, he dies say Gypsy is a "degraded" race, believing his own is superior.

................................................................................................

"Grandcourt is portrayed before us in more massive and simple proportions as a type of concentrated selfishness. We dare not despise him, we cannot loathe him — we stand bowed and awe-stricken before him. He never for a moment falls from that calm dignity of pride and self-isolation — never for a moment softens into respect for anything without himself. Without a moment’s exception he is ever consistent, imperturbable in his self-containedness, ruthlessly crushing all things from dog to wife, under his calm, cold, slighting contempt. He stands up before us, not so much indomitable as simply unassailable. We cannot conceive the boldest approaching or encroaching on him — all equally shiver and quail before that embodiment of the devil as represented by human self-love."

Brown quails before the imaginary character of a wealthy aristocrat with power who'd disdain looking at the likes of Brown, while he feels free to abuse the not so wealthy females such as Rosamond and Tessa!

Casteism and misogyny, fitting companions to racism.

But in truth, while there was nothing unwomanly about Rosamond and no wrong had been committed by Tessa, it's Grandcourt who's less than a man at every step. He didn't stay away fromwife of a man of a lesser position, he didn't insist on their divorce before mating with her, he didn't marry her when she was a widow, and he didn't protect Gwendolyn, knowing she'd be not safe from the mother of his son; he proposed to Gwendolyn telling her he knew she was financially ruined and he'd provide for her family, he married her with not love but intentions to crush her, and did so.

Brown admires this male without heart or soul, with intentions of dominating only the weak, of course. He'd have worshipped nazis.

................................................................................................

"Fain would we linger over the Jewish girl, Mirah. She has been spoken of as characterless; to us it seems as if few characters of more exquisite loveliness 2have ever been portrayed. From her first appearance robed in her meek despair, through all her subsequent relations with Deronda, her brother, and Gwendolen, there is the same delicate purity, the same tender meekness, the same full acceptance of the life of a Jewess as — in harmony with the life of her race — one of “sufferance.” ... "

Did Brown miss the part where she's far from meek when question of relationship between Daniel Deronda and Gwendolyn comes up? More than once, and ferocious enough to surprise her benefactors.

................................................................................................

"We have throughout had no intention of dealing 4with George Eliot merely as the artist; but if we have succeeded in showing this unity of moral purpose and aim as pervading all her works, as giving rise to their variety by reason of the varieties and modifications it necessitates in order to its full illustration, and as ministered to, directly or indirectly, by all the accessory characters and incidents of these creations, — the question naturally arises, whether this does not constitute her an artist of the highest possible order.

"But the true worth of George Eliot’s works rests, we think, on higher grounds than any mere perfection of artistic finish; on this ground, specially, that among all our fictionists she stands out as the deepest, broadest, and most catholic illustrator of the true ethics of Christianity; the most earnest and persistent expositor of the true doctrine of the Cross, that we are born and should live to something higher than the love of happiness; the most subtle and profound commentator on the solemn words, “He that loveth his soul shall lose it: he that hateth his soul shall keep it unto life eternal.”"

According to people who knew her, she'd given up religion, so far as to be estranged from her family; but it's obvious why she did not do well as an author, despite all her intellect and learning, which is not enough to be an artist. Not only she lacked the flow of a creative artist, but this whole shebang of moral lessons delivered with a hammer through her work simply killed it as far as reading public was concerned, and restricted her readership to professional students of literature on the whole, unlike her superlative contemporaries.

Quinine tablets might be the necessary prescribed medicine to swallow if you have malaria, but nobody goes around ordering them for dessert for fun; and even as medicine, they have to be possible to swallow somehow, not raw chunks of bitter. She's left behind for the same reason likes of Brown are limited to bible belt of U.S..

................................................................................................

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October 12, 2021 - October 13, 2021.

The Ethics of George Eliot's Works

by John Crombie Brown

Kindle Edition

Published December 17th 2019

(first published September 27th 2015)

ASIN:- B082VK4CH9

................................................

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4285817595

................................................................................................

................................................

Paperback, 122 pages

Published March 26th 2019

by Wentworth Press

ISBN1011419688

(ISBN13: 9781011419685)

................................................

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4286017832

................................................................................................

................................................

Hardcover, 122 pages

Published March 26th 2019

by Wentworth Press

ISBN1011419696

(ISBN13: 9781011419692)

................................................

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4286018053

................................................................................................

................................................

Nook, 0 pages

Published November 30th 2010

by Quality Classics

ISBN132940012033772

................................................

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4286018203

................................................................................................

................................................

Hardcover, 142 pages

Published May 3rd 2016

by Palala Press

ISBN:- 1355288096

(ISBN13: 9781355288091)

................................................

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4286018506

................................................................................................

Reviews - Books I Read - DRJG

Thursday, October 14, 2021

Belvan (Marathi), by VYANKTESH MADGULKAR.

Wednesday, October 13, 2021

A Secret Revealed (Kindle Edition), by Christopher C. Doyle.

The Ethics Of George Eliot's Works (The Criticism (Complete Works of George Eliot, by George Eliot, Delphi)), by John Crombie Brown.

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