The Clerical Character in George Eliot’s Fiction by Oliver Lovesey

Abstract

REVIEWS Oliver Lovesey, The Clerical Character in George Eliot’s Fiction (Victoria, B.C.: English Literary Studies Monograph Series, No. 53, University of Vic­ toria, 1991). 135. $8.50 (paper). Despite its many interesting observations, this book is too short to cover adequately its twin topics, the characterization and the character of the cleric in Eliot’s novels. The arguments often lack depth and coherence, and are undermined by a disturbing number of misquotations and misreadings. Lovesey begins by surveying the history of religion in England, the his­ tory of the cleric and of his literary representation, the changes in the critical reception of Eliot, and the development of “the conception of literary char­ acter” (16). The chapters that follow cover the characterization methods that make Scenes of Clerical Life an anatomy rather than a typology; “the relationship of the character of the cleric to history, especially the history of Dissent, and religious belief” (36) in Adam Bede and Silas Mamer; the relationship of the cleric to women in The Mill on the Floss; the cleric’s sense of self in Romola and Felix Holt; and the cleric as professional in Middlemarch. Analysis of character is interwoven with discussion of char­ acterization, and therefore of genre, since characterization includes “the delineation of a character’s ‘role’ in narrative” (7). In the final chapter, on Daniel Deronda, Lovesey brings character and characterization together by interpreting Deronda as “one of the best examples of Eliot’s natural priest” (113), and by asserting the “mediating, priestly function” of the narrator (98). This summary imposes a coherence that the book itself lacks— for in­ stance, it is only in this last chapter that mediation is emphasized as part of the clerical role — and it omits many intriguing points briefly raised but not developed, like the tendency for clerics to be seen as barren, and as men better suited to other careers. Theoretical perspective is often fragmentary, sometimes taking the form of a remark wedged into a pre-existing argument: a “nevertheless” on page 43, for instance, seems to connect not with Weber’s words just quoted, but with the sentence before that; on page 105, by making Eng lish Stu d ie s in C a n a d a , 19, 1, March 1993 “this disclosure” refer to Mirah’s discovery mentioned two sentences earlier, Lovesey brackets Said’s intervening comment on imperialism. The reader’s willingness to work through such awkwardness is likely to be severely reduced by the discovery of numerous anomalies ranging from trivial typographical errors to what appear to be wilful misrepresentations of Eliot’s text. “The lower classes, says Mr. Brooke, need the ‘bridge of religion’ ([Middlemarch, Penguin edn.] 41)” (93): this is Lovesey’s rendering of “all men needed the bridle of religion” (emphasis added). “In ‘the rich central plain of what we are pleased to call Merry England’ ( [Silas Marner, Penguin edn.] 53), Aaron says, ‘there need nobody run short o’ victural’ . . . ” (55): the misspelling of “victuals” is a minor offence compared to this conjoining of the narrator’s words on page 53 with Aaron’s remark which (as Lovesey does not tell us) comes from page 198. Sometimes a whole argument is built on a series of misreadings, as in the presentation of Dr. Kenn as Maggie’s confessor in The Mill on the Floss. Quoting the description of Kenn as “a human being who had reached a firm, safe strand, but was looking with helpful pity towards the strugglers still tossed by the waves” ([Penguin edn.] 553), Lovesey likens Kenn to Christ walking on the water, an unlikely analogy since Christ walked from the shore to his disciples’ boat, and then stilled the waves. Lovesey refers to this in­ cident as an “ ‘implicit revelation’ {[Mill] 554)” of Kenn to Maggie (63); but the phrase on page 554 refers to Maggie’s revelation of herself to Kenn. Maggie does not plan “to go back and ‘confess everything’ ( [Mill] 605) to Dr. Kenn” (64); her words are: “they will believe me — I will confess ev­ erything— Lucy will believe me . . . .” The “moral reinforcement” referred to (64) is envisaged as coming not from Dr. Kenn but from “those...