Metaphors of Change in the Language of Nineteenth-Century Fiction: Scott, Gaskell, and Kingsley by Megan Perigoe Stitt (review)

Abstract

Whatever their opinion of universityEnglish, few would deny thatJohn Beer is one of its most impressive,and least contentious, products.With finejudgement his latestbook, a studyof the shiftingmental ideals of the nineteenth century captured through a carefullyplotted sequence of case studies, is dedicated to A. S. Byatt, a criticand novelistwhose fablesand romancesof researchseem to parallelitsproject. To read this book's gentle paragraphs, indeed, is to remind oneself of the very meaning of research:a form of quest, much as Byatt'sstories,many of them set in the same period, or looking back to it, are quests. Beer supportsthe main structure of his workby two essayson Wordsworth'sLucy, one being his second chapter, the other presented as an appendix. They are phases of the same argument (and may, one suspects, once have been continuous), the firstsearching for the state of mind behind the Lucypoems, the second seekingthe girl.That the second endstentatively makesit all the more tantalizinglysuggestive,and may explain why it appearsas an afterthought. It would be churlish to disclose the prey; the hunt though is companionable, and as satisfyingas it is ultimatelyelusive. The Lucy debate occupies the foreground of nineteenth-century studies. F. W. Myers, by contrast, is a neglected figure, more famous as an educationalist and promoter of psychical researchthan as a poet. It is with some satisfactionthat one discovers the complexity behind his respectable countenance. Again, brilliantly, Beer teases us with a mystery:a message left behind at Myers'sdeath to be opened by fellow spiritualists. In the event the message proved disappointing, and apparently misleading. For the indefatigable Beer, who has unearthed facets of Myers's life that the widow suppressed,a deeper meaning attaches to that cryptic note with its reference to Plato. To follow this paper chase to its conclusion is as rewarding, to the mind and to the imagination, as any biography, as engaging as any novel. The writing has an elegance and a drive shared by the chapters on George Eliot's Cambridge, Ruskin'sRose La Touche, and the Bostonian visitor to Wordsworth,William ElleryChanning. The imaginative vigour, the intellectual excitement in all these essays demonstratesjust what English studies, at their historically informed best, can achieve. Deeply original,they discourseon subjectsaboutwhich much needs to be said. Rest easy, Morris. OPEN UNIVERSITY ROBERT FRASER Metaphors ofChange intheLanguage ofNineteenth-Century Fiction.Scott,Gaskell, andKingsley. By MEGANPERIGOE STITT. (Oxford English Monographs) Oxford: Clarendon Press. I998. v+2iopp. f35. Metaphors of Change promises to put nineteenth-century British fiction in dialogue with science, or rather, to show how important and influential the conversation reallywas. Attending to the rhetoricof change in geology and philology (aswell as fiction), Stitt tracksthe meanings of such tropes as rise and fall, line and branch, acorn and oak, attempting to show how both metaphoric language and larger formulationsfrom science informed the novel. Victorianists have long studied the prominent position geology occupied in the Victorian imaginary. Lyell's work at home and Humboldt's abroad animated the world of erosion, strata, and rock formations.Darwin'scarefulreadingof Lyellon board the Beagle is legendary,as is Ruskin's quip about his inability to read Genesis without hearing the hammers of the geologists.A discussionof how geology, one of the age'smostimportantsciences, intersectswith the use of languagein fictionshouldbe of more thanpassinginterest. Stitt's study, however, while crammed with fact, is unlikely to seduce many new Whatever their opinion of universityEnglish, few would deny thatJohn Beer is one of its most impressive,and least contentious, products.With finejudgement his latestbook, a studyof the shiftingmental ideals of the nineteenth century captured through a carefullyplotted sequence of case studies, is dedicated to A. S. Byatt, a criticand novelistwhose fablesand romancesof researchseem to parallelitsproject. To read this book's gentle paragraphs, indeed, is to remind oneself of the very meaning of research:a form of quest, much as Byatt'sstories,many of them set in the same period, or looking back to it, are quests. Beer supportsthe main structure of his workby two essayson Wordsworth'sLucy, one being his second chapter, the other presented as an appendix. They are phases of the same argument (and may, one suspects, once have been continuous), the firstsearching for the state of mind behind...