Eliot and Feminist Theory Theories

George Eliot

Kristeva's philosophy can be applied to nearly every narrative especially in association with the body as a universal source of human language. In every narrative there are traces of description that help the reader understand the universal stance of the body, be it a description of a facial expression or the full description of a character based upon the description of his or her appearance. Eliot makes clear through her character descriptions that the body is the universal symbol of the person as all beings are objects exhibiting behavior within a certain context of their person. One quote from Amos Barton is especially telling of both the conservative context of Eliot's writing and the universal reliance on the abject body as a symbol of the whole being:

No,' said Mr. Hackit, who was fond of soothing the acerbities of the feminine mind with a jocose compliment, 'you held your petticoats so high, to show your tight ankles: it isn't everybody as likes to show her ankles.' This joke met with general acceptance, even from the snubbed Janet, whose ankles were only tight in the sense of looking extremely squeezed by her boots. But Janet seemed always to identify herself with her aunt's personality, holding her own under protest. 51

The ankle in this time was seen as one of the most erogenous pieces of the female anatomy and though there was laughter surrounding this mention it would have been clear that the eighty plus year old conservative woman who was being spoken of in this passage would have been mildly scandalized by such a joke. Eliot, challenges the strict role of women and also plays into the stereotypes, with all her characterizations of women.

Eliot's duality as both a persona and a feminist is often a point of modern analysis as can be seen here:

It seems right that the real George Eliot, if there ever was such a person, still lies in an unconsecrated corner of Highgate Cemetery next to George Henry Lewes, while the self she created with her novels has just been resurrected into the immodestly pompous eternity of Westminster Abbey. These dual graves are one dramatization of a divided life, whose painful care for its own privacy and artistic attentiveness to the private consciousness of others fought a hunger for self-dramatization and an irrepressible instinct for self-display.

Auerbach 253)

Through a quote from a letter that Eliot wrote the reader can see her conviction to better the position of women is very real yet she was continually pulled back by the context of her life and her education. She had strong beliefs and hopes for change:

On the subject of women's education she had something to say to Mrs. Peter Taylor and to Sara. To the first she wrote that she was hoping for much good from the serious presentation of women's claims before Parliament; to Sara she exclaimed Si muove! 'A woman's college, between London and Cambridge, in connection with Cambridge, sharing professors, examinations, degrees!' Writing Barbara Bodichon a little later, she expressed succinctly her wise judgment in regard to education and work both for men and for women. No good could come to either, she felt, while each aimed at doing the highest kind of work, which should be held sacred to the few. Only the few can do the best: the deepest disgrace is to insist on doing that for which we are unfit. (Williams 230-231)

With a careful reading of two of George Eliot's most well-known works, Scenes of Clerical Life: Amos Barton and Adam Bede it is clear that George Eliot was torn between the propriety of her station, which she so wished to reject and an attempt to challenge the position of women. On the one hand she tried to challenge the position of women through the discourse between the male characters within her works. On the other hand she makes clear through her descriptions of those same characters that though they are observable beings they are both foreign and objectified by sensuous description.

Kristeva would say that Eliot through Amos' reliance on the musical aspects of the new evangelical faith he wished to share with all he was attempting to refrain from rejecting the female voice.

Popish blacksmith had produced a strong Protestant reaction by declaring that, as soon as the Emancipation Bill was passed, he should do a great stroke of business in gridirons; and the disinclination of the Shepperton parishioners generally to dim the unique glory of St. Lawrence, rendered the Church and Constitution an affair of their business and bosoms. A zealous Evangelical preacher had made the old sounding-board vibrate with quite a different sort of elocution from Mr. Gilfil's; the hymn-book had almost superseded the Old and New Versions; and the great square pews were crowded with new faces from distant corners of the parish - perhaps from Dissenting chapels. (43)

Eliot's difficult position of wishing to prove the intellectual ability of women while cloaked as a man is fundamental when applied to the feminist philosophy of Kristeva. Kristeva addresses the language of the body as universal and in the first passage of Amos Barton the description of the church building is compared to a part of the Barton anatomy:

Now there is a wide span of slated roof flanking the old steeple; the windows are tall and symmetrical; the outer doors are resplendent with oak-graining, the inner doors reverentially noiseless with a garment of red baize; and the walls, you are convinced, no lichen will ever again effect a settlement on - they are smooth and innutrient as the summit of the Rev. Amos Barton's head, after ten years of baldness and supererogatory soap. Pass through the baize doors and you will see the nave filled with well-shaped benches, understood to be free seats; while in certain eligible corners, less directly under the fire of the clergyman's eye, there are pews reserved for the Shepperton gentility. (Eliot, pg. 41)

Through this description of Amos, Eliot creates both a caricature of Amos as solid and unwavering and at least a little self important.

When she is speaking of his self importance she also outlines a very clear expression of the human reliance upon appearances to both self determineation and public expression. "We are poor plants buoyed up by the air-vessels of our own conceit: alas for us, if we get a few pinches that empty us of that windy selfsubsistence!" (52) Eliot makes clear that through our ideas of self we build our ego and our ideas of self are often associated with confidence, real or imagined in how we look to others. "The very capacity for good would go out of us. For, tell the most impassioned orator, suddenly, that his wig is awry, or his shirt-lap hanging out, and that he is tickling people by the oddity of his person, instead of thrilling them by the energy of his periods, and you would infallibly dry up the spring of his eloquence." (52)

Kristeva would say that Eliot through Amos' reliance on the musical aspects of the new evangelical faith he wished to share with all he was attempting to refrain from rejecting the female voice.

Popish blacksmith had produced a strong Protestant reaction by declaring that, as soon as the Emancipation Bill was passed, he should do a great stroke of business in gridirons; and the disinclination of the Shepperton parishioners generally to dim the unique glory of St. Lawrence, rendered the Church and Constitution an affair of their business and bosoms. A zealous Evangelical preacher had made the old sounding-board vibrate with quite a different sort of elocution from Mr. Gilfil's; the hymn-book had almost superseded the Old and New Versions; and the great square pews were crowded with new faces from distant corners of the parish - perhaps from Dissenting chapels. (43)

Yet, regardless of this unquenching desire to be close to the resonance of sound, and therefore the first sounds of the mother within the womb he is still drawn to reject the mother and through ignorance and propriety so is his faithful wife.

By comparing his Amos' head to a building, which elicits no change and no progress Eliot begins to foreshadow her opinion of Amos as rather fixed, routine and in many ways unaware. Eliot describes Amos as innutrient, unable to offer a safe harbor for learning. She goes on to repeatedly describe him as daft, incapable of living up to his own opinions of himself.

Mr Barton mounted to his study, and occupied himself in the first place with his letter to Mr. Oldinport. It was very much the same sort of letter as most clergymen would have written under the same circumstances, except that instead of perambulate, the Rev. Amos wrote preambulate, and instead of 'if haply', 'if happily', the contingency indicated being the reverse of happy. (59)

Bumbleing on through his duties both unaware of mistakes and despite his unusual education. His plebian family history should never have ensured him an education.

Mr Barton had not the gift of perfect accuracy in English orthography and syntax, which was unfortunate, as he was known not to be a Hebrew scholar, and not in the least suspected of being an accomplished Grecian. These lapses, in a man who had gone through the Eleusinian mysteries of a university education, surprised the young ladies of his parish extremely; especially the Misses Farquhar, whom he had once addressed in a letter as Dear Mads., apparently an abbreviation for Madams. The persons least surprised at the Rev. Amos's deficiencies were his clerical brethren, who had gone through the mysteries themselves. (59)

Kristeva would say that Amos is separated from the softness of life. He is unaware of the maternal body. Disregarding the very real and comforting personage of his very maternal and loving wife.

He opens the sitting-room door, but instead of seeing his wife, as he expected, stitching with the nimblest of fingers by the light of one candle, he finds her dispensing with the light of a candle altogether. She is softly pacing up and down by the red firelight, holding in her arms little Walter, the year-old baby, who looks over her shoulder with large wide-open eyes, while the patient mother pats his back with her soft hand, and glances with a sigh at the heap of large and small stockings lying unmended on the table. (54)

Amos, rather than responding with admiration for the gentleness and loving nature of his wife responds by expressing annoyance that she has not given off this responsibility of nurturing her child to a servant. "But now he has shut the door behind him, and said, 'Well, Milly! ' 'Well, dear!' was the corresponding greeting, made eloquent by a smile. 'So that young rascal won't go to sleep! Can't you give him to Nanny?' 'Why, Nanny has been busy ironing this evening; but I think I'll take him to her now.' And Mrs. Barton glided towards the kitchen... (55)

At the breakfast table it is revealed that the children pay more mind to their mother and her health and appearance than does her husband. "He had not yet looked at Mamma, and did not know that her cheek was paler than usual. But Patty whispered, 'Mamma, have you the headache? '" (59) A strange occurrence even in Eliot's day for a child to pay more mind to their mother than did her spouse. Through all this neglect of the maternal it must also be assumed that Amos does love and honor his wife, even though he never seems to show it. "Besides, Amos was an affectionate husband, and, in his way, valued his wife as his best treasure." (55) Regardless of her recognizable maternal beauty, compared in the next passage even to the universal loving mother the Madonna, Amos repeatedly ignores her.

She was a lovely woman - Mrs. Amos Barton, a large, fair, gentle Madonna, with thick, close, chestnut curls beside her well-rounded cheeks, and with large, tender, short-sighted eyes. The flowing lines of her tall figure made the limpest dress look graceful, and her old frayed black silk seemed to repose on her bust and limbs with a placid elegance and sense of distinction, in strong contrast with the uneasy sense of being no fit, that seemed to express itself in the rustling of Mrs. Farquhar's gros de Naples. (54) woman of such perfect grace and beauty that even the garish in style headpieces that she wore became the pictures of fashion upon her head.

The caps she wore would have been pronounced, when off her head, utterly heavy and hideous - for in those days even fashionable caps were large and floppy; but surmounting her long arched neck, and mingling their borders of cheap lace and ribbon with her chestnut curls, they seemed miracles of successful millinery. (54)

Milly Barton is the perfect example of the angel in the house. She silently works through her day caring for house and children with little regard for herself or her own needs and great regard for the needs and desires of her husband. She protects him unfailingly and repeatedly fails to even notice his daily rejections of her.

Among strangers she was shy and tremulous as a girl of fifteen; she blushed crimson if any one appealed to her opinion; yet that tall, graceful, substantial presence was so imposing in its mildness, that men spoke to her with an agreeable sensation of timidity. Soothing, unspeakable charm of gentle womanhood! which supersedes all acquisitions, all accomplishments. You would never have asked, at any period of Mrs. Amos Barton's life, if she sketched or played the piano. You would even perhaps have been rather scandalized if she had descended from the serene dignity of being to the assiduous unrest of doing. (54)

Milly though never restful also exemplified the floating presence of one who never has to exsert energy to magically produce all of the needs of the home. Even pressed by the finances of a rather selfish, appearance-based man. "Happy the man, you would have thought, whose eye will rest on her in the pauses of his fireside reading - whose hot aching forehead will be soothed by the contact of her cool soft hand who will recover himself from dejection at his mistakes and failures in the loving light of her unreproaching eyes!" (54) Eliot develops a character that is both completely deserving of a greater love than Amos and also completely devoted to him. His constant rejection of her would be seen by Kristeva as a symbol of his need to reject the maternal body.

Milly being unaware of the rejection symbolizes the idea that she is to perfect to notice the objectification. "You would not, perhaps, have anticipated that this bliss would fall to the share of precisely such a man as Amos Barton, whom you have already surmised not to have the refined sensibilities for which you might have imagined Mrs. Barton's qualities to be destined by pre-established harmony." (54) Amos Barton does not deserve the station he has been provided. The message is that his position is one of a protected but soon to be disappointed man. She is to good to be true and her death becomes the only way for Amos to truly see her.

According to Kristeva the desire to reject the body, the maternal body and to abject your partner is the expression of interaction between Amos and his wife. The character development expresses repeated rejections of those things which Amos takes for granted, even though the audience recognizes that those are the things that maintain him and bolster his marginalized existence. Milly floats through her life never stopping work yet never appearing to be stressed by the abundance of work in her life, the work that lays in piles about her waiting to be finished in the dark of night by the light of a single cheap candle.

Mrs Barton's own neat fingers. Wonderful fingers those! they were never empty; for if she went to spend a few hours with a friendly parishioner, out came her thimble and a piece of calico or muslin, which, before she left, had become a mysterious little garment with all sorts of hemmed ins and outs. She was even trying to persuade her husband to leave off tight pantaloons, because if he would wear the ordinary gun-cases, she knew she could make them so well that no one would suspect the sex of the tailor. (57-58)

In the former passage there is even a mild challenge to gender roles, a man would bet the tailor for any man with character and yet Milly's perfection leads her to blindly wish to challenge that role in her excessive desire to nurture and care for Amos, in every way she possibly can and some she simply cannot.

Eliot goes so far as to express that Mrs. Barton would not be the gentle loving creature that she is without having married a man like Amos, because she is more loving than others she must felt he need to fill in the gaps of the lack of love emitted from her spouse. "She - the sweet woman - will like it as well; for her sublime capacity of loving will have all the more scope; and I venture to say, Mrs. Barton's nature would never have grown half so angelic if she had married the man you would perhaps have had in your eye for her - a man with sufficient income and abundant personal eclat." (55) While she compares Amos to a ragged and neglected unlucky dog:

But I, for one, do not grudge Amos Barton his sweet wife. I have all my life had a sympathy for mongrel ungainly dogs, who are nobody's pets; and I would rather surprise one of them by a pat and a pleasant morsel, than meet the condescending advances of the loveliest Skye-terrier who has his cushion by my lady's chair. That, to be sure, is not the way of the world: if it happens to see a fellow of fine proportions and aristocratic mien, who makes no faux pas, and wins golden opinions from all sorts of men, it straightway picks out for him the loveliest of unmarried women, and says, There would be a proper match! Not at all, say I: let that successful, well-shapen, discreet and able gentleman put up with something less than the best in the matrimonial department; and let the sweet woman go to make sunshine and a soft pillow for the poor devil whose legs are not models, whose efforts are often blunders, and who in general gets more kicks than halfpence.

Those angelic women who are capable of taking it are the ones who end up in the worst circumstances because they are the most willing to love the face that only a mother could love.

Even outside the relationship between Amos and Milly there is descriptive language that elicits the feeling of the maternal body. "And now that we are snug and warm with this little tea-party, while it is freezing with February bitterness outside, we will listen to what they are talking about. 'So,' said Mr. Pilgrim, with his mouth only half empty of muffin, 'you had a row in Shepperton Church last Sunday. (46) The people snug within the warmth of a community that may have been catty but still possessed the rich benefits of cheap coal. (59)

In the language of description of characters outside the Barton marriage there is also a general expression of abjection as all the characters have little to say for Amos. They describe him as not deserving of his wife and/or his position. They do not care for his new style evanjelical expression of faith, preaching to the poor while still pandering to the rich for support if the parrish. Though it all seems rather predicatble for the natural resistance to change exists almost universally, yet they also seem to be preparing him for a fall by trying to get him a little closer to the ground than he thinks he is.

Moving on to a slightly less predictable and possibly even more gender challenging text, Adam Bede the reader will again see the same sort of criteria based on the feminist theory of Kristeva, the body as universal to language, the resonance of sound as connected to the maternal voice, the rejection of the maternal body and abjection as a tool for oppression.

In the first passages of Adam Bede the abundance of reliance on the universal language of the body and the body as the outward symbol of character are utilized heavily by Eliot.

Yet the first impression of Adam is his expression of sound, to Kristeva his reliance on an attempt to relive the sounds of his mother from within th ewomb,

It was to this workman that the strong barytone belonged which was heard above the sound of plane and hammer singing

Awake, my soul, and with the sun

Thy daily stage of duty run;

Shake off dull sloth '

Here some measurement was to be taken which required more concentrated attention, and the sonorous voice subsided into a low whistle; but it presently broke out again with renewed vigour-- 'Let all thy converse be sincere, Thy conscience as the noonday clear."

Eliot 5-6)

The rich descriptions of both brothers, first Adam:

Such a voice could only come from a broad chest, and the broad chest belonged to a large-boned muscular man nearly six feet high, with a back so flat and a head so well poised that when he drew himself up to take a more distant survey of his work, he had the air of a soldier standing at ease. The sleeve rolled up above the elbow showed an arm that was likely to win the prize for feats of strength; yet the long supple hand, with its broad finger-tips, looked ready for works of skill. In his tall stalwartness Adam Bede was a Saxon, and justified his name; but the jet-black hair, made the more noticeable by its contrast with the light paper cap, and the keen glance of the dark eyes that shone from under strongly marked, prominent, and mobile eyebrows, indicated a mixture of Celtic blood. The face was large and roughly hewn, and when in repose had no other beauty than such as belongs to an expression of good-humoured honest intelligence.

Eliot 6) and then his brother:

It is clear at a glance that the next workman is Adam's brother. He is nearly as tall; he has the same type of features, the same hue of hair and complexion; but the strength of the family likeness seems only to render more conspicuous the remarkable difference of expression both in form and face. Seth's broad shoulders have a slight stoop; his eyes are grey; his eyebrows have less prominence and more repose than his brother's; and his glance, instead of being keen, is confiding and benignant. He has thrown off his paper cap, and you see that his hair is not thick and straight, like Adam's, but thin and wavy, allowing you to discern the exact contour of a coronal arch* that predominates very decidedly over the brow.

The idle tramps always felt sure they could get a copper from Seth; they scarcely ever spoke to Adam. (Eliot 6)

It is clear from the start that the sensuous nature of the description of Adam that he is the one to be especially admired though his brother is the good natured sort he is of a lower quality than Adam.

Comparing the two men in another area Eliot begins the expression of challenging gender stereotypes and also as in the last work, the challenges to tradition through evangelical faith. When Seth is first described he is described as distracted, his distraction is in the form of his admiration for a woman preacher and the conversation between all the workmen, both poking fun of his admiration, a rejection of the maternal by the men and a conversation about the improper role of women as preachers takes place.

Which was ye thinkin' on, Seth,' he began -- 'the pretty parson's face or her sarmunt,* when ye forgot the panel?'

Come and hear her, Ben,' said Seth, good-humouredly; 'she's going to preach on the Green to-night; happen ye'd get something to think on yourself then, instead o' those wicked songs ye're so fond on. Ye might get religion, and that 'ud be the best day's earnings y' ever made.'

All i' good time for that, Seth; I'll think about that when I'm agoin' to settle i' life; bachelors doesn't want such heavy earnins. Happen I shall do the coortin' an' the religion both together, as ye do, Seth; but ye wouldna ha' me get converted an' chop in* atween ye an' the pretty preacher, an' carry her aff?'

No fear o' that, Ben; she's neither for you nor for me to win, I doubt. Only you come and hear her, and you won't speak lightly on her again.'

Well, I'n half a mind t' ha' a look at her to-night, if there isn't good company at th' Holly Bush. What'll she tek for her text? Happen ye can tell me, Seth, if so be as I shouldna come up i' time for't. Will't be, "What come ye out for to see? A prophetess? Yea, I say unto you, and more than a prophetess"-a uncommon pretty young woman.'*

Come, Ben,' said Adam, rather sternly, 'you let the words o' the Bible alone; you're going too far now.'

What! are ye a-turnin' roun', Adam? I thought ye war dead again th' women preachin',* a while agoo?'

Nay, I'm not turnin' noway. I said nought about the women preachin': I said, You let the Bible alone: you've got a jest-book, han't you, as you're rare and proud on? Keep your dirty fingers to that.'

Why, y'are gettin' as big a saint as Seth. Y'are goin' to th' preachin' to-night, I should think. Ye'll do finely t' lead the singin'. But I dun know what Parson Irwine 'ull say at's gran' favright Adam Bede a-turnin' Methody.'

Never do you bother yourself about me, Ben. I'm not a-going to turn Methodist any more nor you are -- though it's like enough you'll turn to something worse. Mester Irwine's got more sense nor to meddle wi' people's doing as they like in religion. That's between themselves and God, as he's said to me many a time.'

Ay, ay; but he's none so fond o' your dissenters,* for all that.'

Maybe; I'm none so fond o' Josh Tod's thick ale, but I don't hinder you from making a fool o' yourself wi't.'

There was a laugh at this thrust of Adam's, but Seth said, very seriously,

Nay, nay, Addy, thee mustna say as anybody's religion's like thick ale. Thee dostna believe but what the dissenters and the Methodists* have got the root o' the matter as well as the church folks.' (Eliot 8-9)

Through this very early conversation, much is determined about the narration. Eliot is attempting to challenge tradition. Yet, it is also true that she is trying to represent a good man, Adam as a tradtionalist. Regardless of his belief or disbelief in the challenges of traditional faith, one that does not include women preaching he is also keenly aware of the need to keep blasphemy in check.

The universal language of the body is expressed through the representation of the seromons which are received well by some and rejected by the more traditional villagers

But now she had entered into a new current of feeling. Her manner became less calm, her utterance more rapid and agitated, as she tried to bring home to the people their guilt, their willful darkness, their state of disobedience to God-as she dwelt on the hatefulness of sin, the Divine holiness, and the sufferings of the Saviour by which a way had been opened for their salvation. At last it seemed as if, in her yearning desire to reclaim the lost sheep, she could not be satisfied by addressing her hearers as a body. (28)

The very sensuous way in which Eliot describes the preaching of this woman expresses the very fear of traditionalists to the sort of gender challenge that female preaching brings. The idea that a female preaching such and emotional content as faith would surely arouse carnal feelings within her followers. This in and of itself would be a violation of faith. Being unable to reject the bodies unclean bodies desires is in itself a huge failing but in the context of faith unforgivable.

She appealed first to one and then to another, beseeching them with tears to turn to God while there was yet time; painting to them the desolation of their souls, lost in sin, feeding on the husks of this miserable world, far away from God their Father; and then the love of the Saviour, who was waiting and watching for their return. There was many a responsive sigh and groan from her fellow Methodists, but the village mind does not easily take fire, and a little smouldering vague anxiety, that might easily die out again, was the utmost effect Dinah's preaching had wrought in them at present. (28)