Summary:
In order to kind of gather a grasp of Eliot's thoughts, ideas, beliefs and notions behind herself and her writing, I looked very closely to the letters or journal entries that she had written herself. While I read about nine of these letters or journals, the one that stood at most strongly to me was a letter that Eliot wrote to Charles Bray on July 5th of 1859. The footnotes described that Bray and his wife Caroline Hennell were very close friends of Eliot's and even before I read this bit of information I got the idea that George Eliot was addressing this letter to a personal friend. The tone of it stuck me as more friendly, honest and more down-to-earth. Eliot writes to Bray about her belief in writing in a way that depicts a form of art, while at the same time expresses the truths and feelings that readers need to feel from a personal respect from what they as the audience read. In other words, it is important that readers find, see and seek real life experiences through an author's writing. Several of the letters written by Eliot [to others] embark on the same topics. She, as an author, wants to do so much more than just simply deliver an art form (and she strongly believes that art is a communicative ideal to deliver thoughts and/or messages to an audience); she wants her writing to reveal true to life situations that her audiences can feel. Eliot's overall consensus can be pieced together when reading these entries. Ideally she wants her readers to recognize that the lives of ALL individual people will always experience struggles, pain, obstacles and hardships, but that they can all be overcome. Her all-encompassing message seems to be that life needs to be dealt with in a positive and hopeful light no matter what the situation may be.
Analysis:
I love how we (as a class) have been looking at other literature that has been published on what we are looking at or read something about the author (or in this case other writings from the author herself) and it makes me look to the literary piece in an entirely new way! Uncovering the intentions behind George Eliot's writing makes this book seem SO much more interesting. Eliot writes in a letter to Mme. Eugene Bodichon dated February 15th of 1862 that, "I [George Eliot] think the highest and best thing is rather to suffer with real suffering than to be happy in the imagination of an unreal good" (527). This idea alone sheds a whole new light on the conflicts that we are seeing happen in Middlemarch (thus far) because she writes with the goal of having her audience see, think, feel and experience truths of life. She further explains her hopes and goals in the letter to Charles Bray by saying, "the only effect that I ardently long to produce by my writings, is that those who read them should be better able to imagine and to feel the pains and joys of those who differ from themselves in everything but the broad fact of being struggling erring human creatures" (526). Again she is confirming that she writes with the intentions of revealing the truths about all human lives. These letters imply that she sees all humans as one in the same. In other words, we all can feel and experience life, but with life comes strife, grief, pain, struggles, conflict and much more at any given point in time, but more so than living true emotions, I believe that Eliot is inquiring that we should deal with them in the most positive outlook we can. Many of these reoccurring ideas that Eliot presents in her letter or journals I think really struck me as I read them this evening because they also strongly reflect the passage that we looked at today in class from page 40. That passage deals with hiding truths, feelings and emotions as a natural reaction of being a human being, but that maybe we should not "hide our own hurts". An epiphany overcame me about what this passage really meant after reading Eliot's own hopes for her writings. I feel that she was trying to directly tell her audiences what her intentions were as an author; almost as if she was providing a hint to her readers.
In reading the background entries it is very helpful to see that Middlemarch is not just a story; within it lies many messages from the mind of George Eliot. As a reader, I think that I can now better absorb the ideas, the notions and recognize the art in which Eliot shared with her audiences.
Great blog Hannah :) Your words are so insightful and always make me think. What I found most interesting was the quote you posted about Eliot calling humans struggling, erring creatures. That stood out to me given what we talked about in class concerning the characters' dreams and disappointments. In many of the cases, their disappoints stem from the behavior of other characters; for example, Dorothea and Causabon are beginning to be disappointed in their marriage because they are each not what the other person imagined them to be. I think something Eliot could be getting at here is that we all struggle as human beings with being let down by ourselves and by others, and we have to strive on. Maybe that ties into the optimistic attitude that (as you pointed out) Eliot had too.
ReplyDeleteIt seems like you noticed the same thing I did, about Eliot being very pure and simple in what it is that she wants to convey. I tend to agree with you and Krysta as far as Eliot's optimism goes, and the way that it's present in all of her writing. While lots of Victorian literature share similar themes, they're often much darker or bleaker - tons of deaths before anything good truly happens to the characters. While that's not to say that every word of Eliot's writing is a happy one, life in her depiction of England is much more pleasant than, say, the Bronte sisters' or even "Mary Barton."
ReplyDeleteI'm glad looking at the background and contextual information is helpful, Hannah. I love reading correspondence, in particular, between writers. Criticism, too, in that it gives 21st-century readers an understanding of the ways that fiction and authors were judged in the middle of the 19th century.
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