Study Guide to Silas Marner and Middlemarch by George Eliot

Intelligent Education

• Publisher: Influence Publishers
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781645421634
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Manuali di studio
• Subtopic: Guide di studio

A comprehensive study guide offering in-depth explanation, essay, and test prep for selected works by George Eliot, who developed the method of psychological analysis in modern fiction. Titles in this study guide include Silas Marner and Middlemarch. As a revolutionary voice of literary realism and psychological insight of the nineteenth century, Eliot’s books were considered intellectual art with a focus on the importance of mundane life. Moreover, Eliot is known as the “first modern novelist who observed moral, social, and medical phenomena.” This Bright Notes Study Guide explores the context and history of Eliot’s classic work, helping students to thoroughly explore the reasons they have stood the literary test of time. Each Bright Notes Study Guide contains: - Introductions to the Author and the Work
- Character Summaries
- Plot Guides
- Section and Chapter Overviews
- Test Essay and Study Q&As The Bright Notes Study Guide series offers an in-depth tour of more than 275 classic works of literature, exploring characters, critical commentary, historical background, plots, and themes. This set of study guides encourages readers to dig deeper in their understanding by including essay questions and answers as well as topics for further research.

INTRODUCTION TO GEORGE ELIOT

SOCIAL BACKGROUND

Revolution was the key word of nineteenth-century Europe. It was the age of industrial revolution, of scientific upheaval culminating in Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species, of political transformations brought on by the appeals of nationalism, liberalism and-at length-socialism. Although it escaped the violence and bloodshed that attended the change in the Continent, Britain emerged triumphant from the Napoleonic wars, and faced a series of economic and social crises. These years, the years of maturity for George Eliot (1819-1880), and the period of the narrative in Middlemarch, saw indignant and ultimately successful protests against a political system which, even in its most democratic branch, the House of Commons, permitted less than one-sixth of the adult male population to vote.

NEED FOR REFORM

The great mass of English workers lived in appalling misery and degradation-there was much truth in Napoleon’s remark that the British ruling classes treated the rabble like slaves. A typical skilled textile-worker received eighty shillings for a ninety-hour, six-day week. And those who were employed were the lucky ones. Hundreds of thousands of unemployed workers lived in abject poverty in the slums of “machine-age” cities like Birmingham and Leeds. Many of these were displaced farmers driven from their lands by the Enclosures Acts. Although successful in putting English agriculture on a more efficient basis, and perhaps necessary to feed a growing population, this legislation increased and already swollen labor market and aggravated the misery of the workers. Conditions in factory towns were intolerable, but the proponents of reform, such as the Scottish industrialist Robert Owen or the clergyman Charles Kingsley, encountered a cold hostility from the gentry, who took comfort in the dismal dogmas of classical economists like Thomas Malthus, David Ricardo, and others preaching the futility of any attempt to alleviate poverty.

REFORM BILLS

These were the five measures which liberalized representation in the House of Commons. Prior to the first, the Reform Bill of 1832, representation in Parliament was based on a system dating from Queen Elizabeth I’s reign (1558-1603), which failed to allow for shifts in population or the formation of new classes of society which followed in the wake of the Industrial Revolution. Two major abuses of the restrictions upon the franchise were:

1. “Pocket boroughs”: those voting districts which were under the control of either the crown or of a large landholder.
2. “Rotten boroughs”: These in which population had declined and whose power had fallen under the control of narrow town oligarchies or local landowners.

Each “pocket” or “rotten” borough, however, sent two members to Parliament; yet the large manufacturing cities such as Manchester and Birmingham were unrepresented. Of the total British population in 1831, consisting of twenty-four million people, only four hundred thousand were eligible to vote. Widespread corruption and the sale of parliamentary seats flourished, until dissatisfaction led to government action.

REFORM BILL OF 1832

Enacted under the Whig administration of Lord Grey, this first of five reform bills (the others were in 1867, 1884, 1918, and 1928) was far from perfect, but certain positive measures had been taken to adjust the inequity of the franchise:

1. Seats were redistributed, an action which thereby improved the power of the larger cities and towns.
2. In the boroughs, any person who occupied premises with an annual value of ten pounds received the franchise.
3. In the counties, any leaseholder who occupied premises with an annual value of ten pounds received the franchise.
4. Voter registration and voting procedure were simplified.

With the passage of the first Reform Bill over eight hundred thousand Englishmen were finally permitted to vote.

CHARTISM

In English reform movements, “Chartism” is the name given to the period of 1838-1848. The Reform Bill of 1832 failed to extend the franchise to the poorer classes; this fact, and a widespread discontent with economic deprivation, brought about widespread approval, in 1838, of the “People’s Charter.” Written by William Lovett and Francis Place, the document advocated the following:

1. Universal manhood suffrage.
2. Voting by secret ballot.
3. Election of Parliament annually.
4. Removal of property qualifications for the House of Commons.
5. Payment of salary for members of the House of Commons.
6. Formation of equal voting districts.

The movement, which had the support of many trade unions, represented the first attempt by the English working classes to win political power. Although a number of parliamentary reforms were begun under the Chartist activities, its force died out because of civil strife between moderate and extremist factions within the movement.

RATIONALISM

In religion, rationalism is the philosophical view which believes as true only those tenets or religious belief which can be established by reason. Supernatural revelation and the mysteries of faith are generally denied. Although the orthodox positions of formal religious faiths are found to be unacceptable by rationalistic standards, many individual rationalists find a positive force, an “Unseen Divinity,” operating in the world. Others, however, deny the existence of a supreme being, and consider the most worthy reward one can expect for leading a good life is the life itself, and the hope that future generations of mankind will profit from it.

LIFE

In 1857, a middle-aged English woman upon the advice of her husband assumed the pen name of George Eliot and began to publish fiction. Two of her most popular novels, Silas Marner and Middlemarch, are widely read today, and her reputation as a major chronicler of English village life has endured for over a century.

Mary Ann (or Marian) Evans was born on November 22, 1819, at South Farm, Nuneaton (near Coventry), in Warwickshire, England. Her father, like Caleb Garth in Middlemarch, was an estate manager for several squires. He had five children, three by an earlier marriage. Mary Ann attended good boarding schools and excelled in language study until she was forced to return to supervise the family upon the death of her mother and the marriage of her sister (at which time she changed her name from Mary Ann to Marian).

Her love for language, however, did not cease; she continued her studies of German and Italian and also began the study of Hebrew. When she was twenty-two, the family moved to Coventry; here Mary Ann met and was influenced by the anti-Christian philosophy of Charles Hennell and Charles Bray and his wife. It was shortly thereafter that she renounced her Evangelical (Anglican) beliefs. Although she continued to respect the viewpoint of churchgoers, she remained a skeptic until her death. Her father (who had been distressed by his daughter’s loss of faith) died in 1849. This was three years after Marian had published a translation of the erudite German work, The Life of Jesus (Das Leben Jesu), an unorthodox view of Christ which denied the supernatural elements in the Gospels.

After her father’s death, she went abroad for eighteen months, returning home in 1851 to accept a post as assistant editor with The Westminster Review. Living in the London building which housed the magazine offices, she soon became immersed in a stimulating intellectual circle. It included the brilliant philosopher Thomas Carlyle, and the critic and editor George Henry Lewes. Marian’s wan complexion, large equine features, and serious demeanor contrasted with the depth and acuity of her mind and the brilliance of her conversation. Lewes had a broken complexion and was extremely short, but he was witty, urbane, and a versatile writer. When they met. Lewes’ wife had recently deserted him and their three children; Marian Evans and he, defying convention, soon formed an attachment in which she accepted the role of wife, but without legal contract. The couple left immediately for a tour of Germany. Upon their return to London, many (but not all) of their free-thinking London friends accepted their action as a logical consequence of rationalistic beliefs. A great irony for many readers of Eliot’s novels is the disparity between the consistent didacticism throughout her writing and the irregularity of her relationship with Lewes.

In 1857, at the urging of Lewes, she began to publish serially her first short stories and sketches under the pseudonym of George Eliot. (Notice Lewes’ first name and the similarity between “Evans” and “Eliot.”) The chronology of her work covers almost twenty years. Scenes of Clerical Life appeared in 1858. It is a work comprising three stories: “The Sad Fortunes of the Reverend Amos Barton,” “Mr. Gilfil’s Love Story,” and “Janet’s Repentance.” Her first novel, Adam Bede, appeared in 1859 and was followed by The Mill on the Floss in 1860 and Silas Marner in 1861. These four titles form the body of her first period of work, based on the memories of her youth in Warwickshire. To many readers, her later novels fail to capture the imagination of these early ones, set in the rustic English countryside. Virginia Woolf, the twentieth-century novelist and critic, suggests that George Eliot is out of her element when she leaves the rustic scenes to portray higher levels of society. In The Common Reader Mrs. Woolf observes: “She is in the first place driven beyond the home world she knew and loved and forced to set foot in middle-class drawing rooms where young men sing all the summer morning and young women sit embroidering smoking-caps for bazaars. She feels herself out of her element, as her clumsy satire of what she calls ‘good society’ proves.”

The middle period of her work includes Romola, a historical novel set in Florence, and Felix Holt, a political novel set in England during the era of the first Reform Bill. Her later period embraces Middlemarch (1871), a complex treatment of provincial life on its various levels. This novel, first published serially, is considered by many critics to be her masterpiece. Her final novel, Daniel Deronda (1876), presents a positive picture of Jewish life, perhaps the finest ever painted by a Christian author.

George Henry Lewes died in 1878. In November of the same year George Eliot published a book of essays called The Impressions of Theophrastus Such, probably written before Lewes’ death. George Eliot died two years later on December 22, 1880, a few months after marrying John W. Cross, who was her official biographer. Arranged by form, her major works include:

WORKS BY GEORGE ELIOT

Translations

1846 Life of Jesus by David Friedrich Strauss

1854 Essence of Christianity by Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach

Poems

1868 The Spanish Gypsy

1874 Jubal and Other Poems

Novels

1858 Scenes of Clerical Life

1859 Adam Bede

1860 The Mill on the Floss

1861 Silas Marner

1863 Romola

1866 Felix Holt the Radical

1871 Middlemarch

1876 Daniel Deronda

Essays

1879 Impressions of Theophrastus Such

CAREER

George Eliot, in the opinion of David Cecil, a modern critic of the Victorian novel, is the “first modern novelist.” The first period of the English novel...