George Eliot's use of realism in her novels and poetry

Realism of George Eliot

George Eliot's work is engaging on so many levels, she draws the reader in to the web of the situation that is depicted. One of the most engaging aspects of most of her work is the engrossing realism. The realism is so intense that if the reader could close his or her eyes, while still reading they would see the images invoked in the work. This is true of Eliot's beloved novels as well as her prolific, but frequently unpublished works of poetry. Eliot demonstrates a sense of the age, naturalism and realism dominate the ideals of the Victorian era. Eliot has a way of making even the most mundane of scenes picturesque.

A the distinctiveness of the form of the naturalistic novel lies in the attempt of that form to persuade us, in the context of a fully depicted concrete world, that only the questioning, seeking, timeless self is real, that the temporal world outside the self is often treacherous and always apparent. The naturalistic novel thus reflects our doubts about conventional notions of character and experience while continuing to affirm through its symbolism both the sanctity of the self and the bedrock emotional reality of our basic physical nature and acts.

Pizer 39-40)

Eliot intensifies realism in her poetry, though there are at least two examples from her novels that must be shared here, before moving on to poetry. In the supportive entrance to the world of Adam Bede Eliot describes a scene that envelopes the reader. The reader can see the images of the scene as if it were right in front of them.

The afternoon sun was warm on the five workmen there, busy upon doors and window-frames and wainscoting. A scent of pine-wood from a tent-like pile of planks outside the open door mingled itself with the scent of the elder-bushes which were spreading their summer snow close to the open window opposite; the slanting sunbeams shone through the transparent shavings that flew before the steady plane, and lit up the fine grain of the oak panelling which stood propped against the wall. On a heap of those soft shavings a rough grey shepherd-dog had made himself a pleasant bed, and was lying with his nose between his forepaws, occasionally wrinkling his brows to cast a glance at the tallest of the five workmen, who was carving a shield in the centre of a wooden mantelpiece.

Eliot 395)

There is a clear sense of the place, the realism of the way that the scene would make an individual feel upon first seeing it and living the experience independent of a work of fiction.

Eliot demonstrates extreme realism of emotion, as it associates with the physical. The physical world creates in her fiction a scene of transformative lingering memory. In one particular poem, this connection to the physical as a way to remember a grand moment in the past is expressed eloquently through the recalled vision of a child. Brother and Sister plays a trick on the mind as the reader can see the nature of the place where a shared experience of sibling bonding is expressed.

Our meadow-path had memorable spots:

One where it bridged a tiny rivulet,

Deep hid by tangled blue Forget-me-nots;

And all along the waving grasses met

My little palm, or nodded to my cheek,

When flowers with upturned faces gazing drew

My wonder downward, seeming all to speak

With eyes of souls that dumbly heard and knew. (Eliot (http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/2696.html)

The whole of the work, expresses the ideals of remembering a time of greater innocence, and a bond between the natural surrounding and the two innocent characters that are building a bond that will last forever but never really be the same.

Creating the value of the realism, the characters emote the surroundings, a picture of the theatrical is evident and yet the naturalism of the characters emotions are clear and concise. Within Two Lovers the characters in this natural setting, are romantically entwined not only with one another but with the intermingling natural world.

Two lovers by a moss-grown spring:

They leaned soft cheeks together there,

Mingled the dark and sunny hair,

And heard the wooing thrushes sing.

A budding time!

A love's blest prime!

Two wedded from the portal stept:

The bells made happy carolings,

The air was soft as fanning wings,

White petals on the pathway slept. (Eliot in Stevenson, Burton Egbert.

The Home Book of Verse. At (http://www.famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/george_eliot/poems/3456)

The value of the descriptive phrase is even more essential in poetry, as the reader is not given lengthy opportunity to intermingle with the thoughts and feelings of characters, yet Eliot creates the same visual sense of place for the reader, in her poetry as in her prose. In a sense it would be safe to say that the descriptive phrase in her prose is really the poetry of her works. It is also not to say that everything Eliot described in her prose or poetry was clearly angelic and good, though most examples give a glowing feeling one example of a poem that places the reader in a much grayer and more depressed state is in a London Drawingroom.

The sky is cloudy, yellowed by the smoke.

For view there are the houses opposite

Cutting the sky with one long line of wall

Like solid fog: far as the eye can stretch

Monotony of surface & of form

Without a break to hang a guess upon.

No bird can make a shadow as it flies,

For all is shadow, as in ways o'erhung

By thickest canvass, where the golden rays

Are clothed in hemp. No figure lingering

Pauses to feed the hunger of the eye

or rest a little on the lap of life.

All hurry on & look upon the ground,

or glance unmarking at the passers by the wheels are hurrying too, cabs, carriages

All closed, in multiplied identity.

The world seems one huge prison-house & court

Where men are punished at the slightest cost,

With lowest rate of colour, warmth & joy. (Eliot (http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/2696.html)

The work describes London on a cool winter day with the most extreme emotional sense. Eliot describes boredom and dreariness, something given as a description of London on a day like is described frequently by 19th century dwellers and visitors as well as 21st century dwellers and visitors. It is as if the reader is enveloped in the pane of the window looking down at the gray scene.

The final example, of which I am sure there are countless more is in a sense comical as it depicts the feeling one has when the realize that they are mortal and aging. The work is demonstrative of how almost anyone feels when they find their very first grey hair. The work is called Mid my Gold-brown Curls:

Mid my gold-brown curls

There twined a silver hair:

plucked it idly out and scarcely knew 'twas there.

Coiled in my velvet sleeve it lay

And like a serpent hissed:

Me thou canst pluck & fling away,

One hair is lightly missed;

But how on that near day

When all the wintry army muster in array?"(Eliot (http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/2696.html)

The poem is comical in its representation of the individual seeking to make light of a newly found example of her mortality and then realizes that time will not stop or even slow down and there will be a day rather soon when the "wintry army" will be more than a simple plucking of one hair.

From these examples there is a varied sense of the realism of Eliot in both her prose and her poems. The realism of Eliot demonstrates a reflection of the era. The naturalist and realism movements were ingrained in the Victorian 19th century and yet the descriptive nature of Eliot's works make them in many ways timeless. The characters are enveloped with the reader into the surroundings of events of human social drama.