A Few Words More about Victorian Women Writers and Germany: George Eliot and Amy Levy

Abstract

Abstract This article revisits the relation between George Eliot and Amy Levy (1861–89), a lesbian New Woman Jewish poet, novelist, short-story writer, and journalist. Levy’s most familiar response to Eliot is a scene in Reuben Sachs (1889), Levy’s last novel, which mocks Eliot’s portrayal of Jewish characters in Daniel Deronda (1876). But Levy was an avowed admirer of Eliot in her early life and alluded to Eliot positively in the short story “Between Two Stools” (1883). In considering Eliot’s potential legacy for Levy, this article examines their shared representation of psychic experience in “The Lifted Veil” (1859) and “The Recent Telepathic Incident at the British Museum” (1887), their shared consideration of conflicts between women’s intellectual aspirations and domesticity in Armgart (1870) and “Xantippe” (1880), and their shared representations of persecution of the Roma in The Spanish Gypsy (1868) and “Run to Death” (1879).