George Eliot’s Screaming Statues, Laocoon , and the Pre-Raphaelites

Abstract

This essay uncovers George Eliot’s parodic staging of G. E. Less-ing’s Laocoon in the tableau vivant in Daniel Deronda , showing how Lessing’s writing scaffolds crucial scenes of ekphrasis in the novel. Scholars argue that George Eliot aligns herself uncritically with Lessing, but this essay offers a new understanding of how she plays with his central binary of visual stasis and narrative movement to reveal Gwendolen Harleth’s gradual progress. On a larger level, it shows how George Eliot invokes Lessing’s distinctions to counter contemporary visual artists who aestheticized tragic female stasis, notably the Pre-Raphaelites and other artists such as Gustave Doré.