George Eliot and the Eighteenth-Century Novel

Abstract

GEORGE ELIOT never proclaimed any direct allegiance to the eighteenth-century novel, which in her time had fallen into a mild disrepute. The Victorians tended to look down upon the eighteenth century and its productions as at once cold-hearted and vulgar-thus to some extent meriting what was coming to themselves in twentieth-century disdain of things Victorian. George Eliot's fiction, of course, contains many direct references to eighteenth-century habits and ideas, but she was always more overtly interested in the eighteenth century than in the eighteenthcentury novel; thus, in seeing the relation of her fiction to eighteenth-century novels, the critic must proceed on inference. That George Eliot was thoroughly acquainted with the major novelists of the eighteenth century is, however, undeniable. There are direct references within her work to the novels of Smollett, Fielding, and Richardson, but to deal solely with such echoes from eighteenth-century classics by no means covers the whole case of her relation to eighteenth-century fiction. With the example of Ellen,Moers's criticism to encourage us, we should also take into account the tradition established by the Literary Women, many half-forgotten novelists of the eighteenth century. It is time to revisit some writers who rest in unvisited tombs, for it is partly owing to them that things were not so ill with George Eliot as they might