Summary & Analysis of "Background Information on Middlemarch"

Summary:

The pages of background information I read were pages 528-538. The background information mostly consisted of letters George Eliot wrote to people such as Dr. Clifford Allbutt, John Blackwood, and her author friend Harriet Beecher Stowe. There were also various collections from her personal writings and journals. One of these concerns the meaning of the word 'form' in regards to art and poetry; another is about how to judge an author's worth; the third is simply titled "Story Telling" and are Eliot's ideas about how a story needs to be told.

Analysis:

The last two pieces I mentioned, "Judgements on Authors" and "Story Telling", were the most interesting to me to read. I thought they were interesting because they were ideas directly from Eliot's mind on issues that pertain to literature and writing, which were obviously her areas of expertise. She wrote that in deciding an author's worth, "It requires considerable knowledge of what he has himself done, as well as of what others had done before him, or what they were doing contemporaneously; it requires deliberate reflection as to the degree in which our own prejudices may hinder us from appreciating the intellectual or moral bearing of what on a first view offends us" (537). I thought this comment was interesting given what we've been talking about in class about how some of the novels of the Victorian period offended readers. For example, we discussed how a lot of the public didn't like Mary Barton or Charles Dickens' works because they dealt with themes and ideas that readers didn't want to face (i.e. poverty, prostitution, and violence). Many novels, including these, couldn't be fully appreciated in their time because the public had too many prejudices to recognize the novels' good points. According to Eliot's view, readers have to put that aside in order to decide which authors and novels are great. In "Story Telling" it was interesting how Eliot states that stories are more interesting that do not just start at the beginning and end at the end; instead, she talks about how (for example) introducing a stranger into the plot and then slowly revealing his backstory to the reader is much more exciting. I thought that was funny since that is essentially what she is doing with Lydgate. He is a newcomer to the town of Middlemarch, and it takes awhile for the narrator to say something along the lines of, 'If you want to know a little bit about Lydgate's past, listen up!' Eliot asks, "Why should a story not be told in the most irregular fashion that an author's idiosyncrasy may prompt, provided that he gives us what we can enjoy?" (538). This remark clearly stems from Eliot's preferred way of telling a story since the telling of her story is completely different and innovative for its time. She weaves so skillfully between all of the characters' lives, and (even though it can be a little confusing at times) it keeps me interested about what kind of characters I'm going to encounter next.

Summary & Analysis of "Class Antagonism and the Sexual Plot in Mary Barton"

Summary:

The piece of criticism I read is called "Class Antagonism and the Sexual Plot in Mary Barton," written by Deborah Epstein Nord and published in 1995. Nord discusses how two of the major themes of the novel (class antagonism and women's sexuality) at first seem like they don't really interact with each other and exist separately from each other. However, Nord points out how the two work together to bring about the turning point in the book and change Mary's character. She states, "The connection between Barton's fear for his daughter's chastity and his murder of Harry Carson, the man who threatens that chastity, is one of the elements in the novel that fuses the plot of class antagonism with the sexual plot" (571). The two themes come together at this point because Harry represents all the evils of the upper class and has been horrible to the workers, but he also treats women horribly and doesn't care about ruining their innocence, so to speak. Nord argues that John Barton has a double purpose in murdering Harry: obviously because of the economic situation, but also to preserve Mary's chastity. The turning point in the novel, according to Nord, occurs when John murders Harry. She says, "Mary is transformed from the passive subject of discussions of her sexual virtue and proper role to the active agent of her own fate" (572). In other words, all of the issues fueled by the class antagonism build up into the explosion that is the murder, which in turn allows Mary to have agency for the first time, tying back into the sexuality theme.

Analysis:

Even though everything Nord argued about the interplay between class antagonism and sexuality is really interesting, a smaller issue she brings up really caught my attention. Nord talks briefly about the character of Esther, who is one of the most interesting characters in the novel I thought. While readers during Gaskell's lifetime would have been horrified by Esther's character, Gaskell tries to redeem her a little bit. Nord points out, "By playing the card of the dying child, Gaskell reclaims Esther from her status as pariah and situates her within the framework of parental devotion and bereavement that weaves classes together in the novel and binds John Barton and the elder Carson to the author herself" (570). So, even though Esther is a prostitute, we are still supposed to have sympathy for her and see her similarly to Barton and Carson (and even Gaskell) who have lost children themselves. Nord stresses the similarity especially between Esther and Barton and discusses how they both become lost wanderers, outcasts from society, who die and are buried in the same grave. The aspect of Nord's criticism that made me think the most is how she points out how Gaskell must have understood that Esther's identity as a prostitute is clearly a "role created by society, not decreed by nature or by some higher morality" (570). In other words, Esther wasn't the horrible 'fallen woman' the other characters (and probably readers of that time) thought she was; in reality, her circumstances put her in that situation. The opposite of that role is shown when she goes to visit Mary and puts on the 'costume' of a middle class mechanic's wife. Esther is able to switch between roles, which suggests that Gaskell meant for there to be much more to her character than just a lowly prostitute living on the streets. In the end, Esther's character is redeemed somewhat and able to die in her home surrounded by her family, her daily struggles finally put to rest.

Summary & Analysis of "Contemporary Reviews of Mary Barton"

Summary:

I chose to look at two different reviews for this blog entry. I read Charles Kingsley's review from Fraser's Magazine and W.R. Greg's review from the Edinburgh Review. Both of these reviews were published in April of 1849. Kingsley wrote about how he thought Mary Barton should be "read aloud from every pulpit, till a nation, calling itself Christian, began to act upon the awful facts contained in it" (381). He states that people only need to read this novel if they are wondering why members of the working class are behaving in an 'abhorrent' way, why they are murdering, drinking, taking opium, and why they hate law and order. Kingsley believes Mary Barton shows precisely why the working class was behaving in such a way, even to the point of turning their backs on God. He praises Gaskell for her realism. W.R. Greg also praises Gaskell for the realism of the novel, but his praise is short-lived. He claims Mary Barton is "calculated...in many places, to mislead the minds and confirm and exasperate the prejudices, of the general public" (383). Greg also claims the novel is filled with "false philosophy and inaccurate descriptions" and even "exaggerations" on the part of Gaskell when describing relations between the workers and the masters (383). His review is interesting because he critiques the character of John Barton, argues that the working class only have themselves to blame for their poverty by not saving their money, and ends with the statement that "their fate and their future are in their own hands, and in theirs alone" (390).

Analysis:

For my analysis, I really want to focus on W.R. Greg's criticism, with specific emphasis on how he blames the poor for their own misfortune. After reading Mary Barton, it is clear to me that the majority of the horrible things that happen to the characters are not their own fault, but the fault of the society and system in which they live.The discussion in class in which we outlined the characters' misfortune due to their economic situation also helped illuminate this for me because almost everything bad we listed happened because of their poverty. Greg tries to argue that the members of the working class could be just as well off as their masters, saying that he truly believes that "wealth and independence could speedily become the rule instead of the exception" (388) among these people. Looking at the situation from a sociological point of view, you just can't blame the poor for these issues; it's a complex topic that cannot be explained away by those in the upper classes saying that they should just try harder to save their money. Greg's whole attitude toward the poor reminds me of the Poor Law Amendment of 1834 that we discussed briefly in class. Public assistance is supposed to help those in need, but during this time, the poor were instead characterized as 'idle' and 'dissolute,' and thus were blamed for their poverty more than actually helped. I was surprised that nowhere did Greg use the argument that God chooses some to be poor in their lifetime, while their true reward will come in heaven (which is another common argument for not helping the poor). He adopts a similar attitude, though, that the poor are just poor and nothing is going to change unless they decide to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. While Kingsley shows compassion and sympathy for the characters of Mary Barton (and the members of the working class in general), Greg only questions their work ethic.