Incarnation, Inwardness, and Imagination: George Eliot's Early Fiction

Abstract

The secret of our emotions never lies in bare object, but in its subtle relations to our own past: no wonder secret escapes unsympathising observer, who might as well put on spectacles to discern odours. --George Eliot, Adam Bede Is there not a spiritual existence that belongs to individuals? --Soren Kierkegaard, Repetition can't help laughing at imbecility of that pious dictum--that if Shelley had lived till now he would have been a Christian--that is, he would have been old woman enough for it by this (Haight, Letters II: 126). This biting comment from Marian Evans to her friend Sara Sophia Hennell in 1853 stands as a warning to anyone wanting to reopen question of George Eliot's attitude towards religion. Yet, as several recent publications suggest--notably Peter Hodgson's book, The Mystery Beneath Real: Theology in Fiction of George Eliot; Barry Qualls's chapter on in Cambridge Companion to George Eliot; and Michael Davis's chapter on in Daniel Deronda in George Eliot and Nineteenth-Century Psychology--it is time for a reappraisal of George Eliot's understanding of and for a more comprehensive analysis of deep and inextricable interrelation of and imagination that informs her aesthetic. In great age of religious questioning, which U. C. Knoepflmacher notes was obsessed with epistemology (160), Eliot's importance was such that Lord Acton can call her the emblem of a generation distracted between intense need of believing and difficulty of belief (Carroll, George Eliot: The Critical Heritage 463). In conflict of interpretations that David Carroll rightly sees as central to her narrative situations, (George Eliot and Conflict of Interpretations), Eliot's fiction reveals, I will argue, her own exploration of and imagination and her discovery of their inseparable connection as hermeneutical mindsets. It is impossible to read Eliot's novels without thinking about religion, one would think, since, even when they do not directly concern religious clerics, they focus on characters engaged in deeply religious struggles. Eliot's work is rich enough that astute readers can find material for almost any sophisticated reading, and it is perhaps not surprising that while critics in a secular culture have tended to follow standard view that Marian Evans lost her faith as a young woman, there is increasing interest in necessary complexities of any such trajectory. While there have always been critics and readers speaking against tide, pervasive tendency has been to acknowledge her early piety and reiterate wisdom (Hodgson 1) that after her encounter with higher criticism, firstly through Charles Hennell and then Strauss and Feuerbach, and with Comte school, her Christian beliefs were replaced by a Feuerbachian version of of humanity. While crucial influence of all of these is undeniable, I agree with Peter Hodgson when he argues that George Eliot never became a disciple of any system or ideology. (1) Instead, rather like one of mollusks which were subject of her husband's study, she accreted these beliefs like so many layers, each new level of knowledge adding to and adapting, rather than displacing, her earlier views. While it is easy enough to find comments in her letters declaring her rejection of conventional forms of Christianity, it is not much harder to find as many comments that modify and complicate these declarations of unbelief. (2) In his book, Hodgson briefly analyzes each of Eliot's novels for their Christian content, and extrapolates from that principles of what he calls George Eliot's future religion (13), a form of revisionist postmodern theology (152) which he aligns with various theologians from Schleiermacher to Ricouer. Hodgson's idea that George Eliot practiced a faith, which kept reality of God in suspense (2), echoes ideas of philosopher Richard Kearney, himself a student of Ricouer. …