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A review by john_of_oxshott
Scenes of Clerical Life by George Eliot
5.0
This is a collection of three stories set in and around a fictional town in the middle of England somewhat resembling Nuneaton, where the author grew up. There can be no doubt when you read them that you are being treated to something very different and very special. They are intensely literary and the author’s genius shines through in every sentence. Her confidence is apparent from the start and it’s obvious that the short story form is too confining for her. As she develops her themes she craves more space. She has too much to say. Each story is longer than the last, and the range and depth increase so rapidly that the fourth “scene” that she planned to write will no longer fit and instead becomes her first novel, Adam Bede.
George Eliot makes it very clear what her ambition is. She aims to present “the poetry and the pathos, the tragedy and the comedy” of “commonplace people”. Her work is entertaining, funny, sarcastic but it is also a superior form of social commentary, a vehicle for teaching us how to use our imagination to deepen our understanding of the lives of ordinary human beings. It’s a blueprint for the future direction of fiction and the English literary novel.
Her sarcasm can be withering. When the widowed Countess Caroline Czerlaski is forced to walk out of the comfortable house she was sharing with her brother and settle in a room in the vicarage, she flatters herself that in “gracefully overlooking the deficiencies of the accommodation” she was “really behaving charmingly.” We are then treated to a paragraph which is heavy with irony.
Countess Czerlaski’s delusions are shattered by the bold and outspoken criticisms of her host’s Nanny, “the maid-of-all-work, who had a warm heart and a still warmer temper.”
It’s significant that it is the use of her imagination, stimulated by Nanny’s plain speaking, that finally propels the Countess to do the right thing.
It is Amos Barton’s deficient imagination that gets him into trouble with his parishioners, for he is unable to see how his friendship with the Countess might be construed. He is blind, too, to the offence he is causing the most influential of them with his “fertile suggestiveness as to what it would be well for them to do in the matter of the church repairs.”
George Eliot underlines this lack of imagination tellingly when she tells us how he was forced to leave his parish. His poor imagination makes his plight even harder to bear.
The next “scene” takes us back to the latter end of the eighteenth century. It tells the story of a young clergyman and a pretty Italian orphan who is adopted by Sir Christopher Cheverel and brought to live in his manor house in Shepperton. There is a melodramatic twist in Mr Gilfil’s Love-Story, which comes as a shock to the characters and to the reader. Nevertheless Mr Gilfil, the clergyman, draws from it a deeply philosophical conclusion. We are not evil, he tells Caterina, unless we do evil. The utterance is not entirely free of George Eliot’s irony, for Mr Gilfil’s behaviour throughout the story has demonstrated restraint. He hides his feelings until he is at last able to express them without causing harm. Is his behaviour in the end harmful to Caterina Sarti? George Eliot ultimately suggests not. The tragedy for Caterina is that, in spite of her passionate feelings and strong sense of self-worth, everyone in the story treats her to a greater or lesser extent as a ‘black-eyed monkey’, and a ‘little simpleton.’ But George Eliot’s empathy, humanity and compassion are everywhere in evidence. For her, deep passionate love, early sorrow and quiescent old age are just part of the human landscape. Mr Gilfil, we are told, “had been sketched out by nature as a noble tree” and his love for Caterina is presented as a bright spot in a wholly respectable and good life.
The third “scene”, Janet’s Repentance, is really a short novel. It is dense with ideas and characters. Some of these ideas can be hard for us to understand since they are to do with variations in Christian teaching that fractured the Church of England in the nineteenth century. These doctrines are the cause of deep divisions even in the small town of Milby, where dissent was “of a lax and indifferent kind” and where “many of the middle-aged inhabitants, male and female, often found it impossible to keep up their spirits without a very abundant supply of stimulants.” The factions engage in a “sort of warfare”, “poisoned with calumny”, which causes “ugly stories” to circulate and much of the story is told through the gossip of its characters.
The catalyst for the events in the story is the arrival of Mr. Edgar Tryan, who is the first clergyman to bring the infection of Evangelicalism to the town. The town divides into “two zealous parties, the Tryanites and the anti-Tryanites.”
Janet is married to the anti-Tryanite ringleader, Robert Dempster, a drunken lawyer who breaks out into violence and drives his carriage too fast, “flogging his galloping horse like a madman.”
Janet, who married him in spite of the opposition of her friends, is seen as a good woman even though she, too, needs to drink. “When a woman can’t think of her husband coming home without trembling, it’s enough to make her drink something to blunt her feelings…” Even Mr. Tryan has noticed that Janet “is really an interesting-looking woman” and “goes among the poor a good deal.”
The tragic circumstances that are to come are already foreshadowed in the gossip of the townsfolk but George Eliot unfolds the details of the plot with extraordinary insight, sensitivity and skill. The story is laced with dark humour and her authorial voice can sometimes be surprisingly sharp and almost cruel. But the warmth of her compassion always comes to the fore in the most poignant parts of the story and we are reminded, in the end, of her purpose to reveal the poetry as well as the tragedy in the lives of ordinary people.
George Eliot often addresses us as her equals. Of course, we are not. Even such notable writers as Elizabeth Gaskell felt humbled by the forceful imagination George Eliot unleashed in these stories. “I think I have a feeling,” she wrote in a letter in 1863, “that it is not worth while trying to write, while there are such books as Adam Bede and Scenes of Clerical Life — I set Janet’s Repentance above all, still.”
I think Elizabeth Gaskell was right. This is a very fine book and a truly astonishing debut.
George Eliot makes it very clear what her ambition is. She aims to present “the poetry and the pathos, the tragedy and the comedy” of “commonplace people”. Her work is entertaining, funny, sarcastic but it is also a superior form of social commentary, a vehicle for teaching us how to use our imagination to deepen our understanding of the lives of ordinary human beings. It’s a blueprint for the future direction of fiction and the English literary novel.
Her sarcasm can be withering. When the widowed Countess Caroline Czerlaski is forced to walk out of the comfortable house she was sharing with her brother and settle in a room in the vicarage, she flatters herself that in “gracefully overlooking the deficiencies of the accommodation” she was “really behaving charmingly.” We are then treated to a paragraph which is heavy with irony.
“So, though she lay in bed till ten, and came down to a separate breakfast at eleven, she kindly consented to dine as early as five, when a hot joint was prepared, which coldly furnished forth the children’s table the next day; she considerately prevented Milly from devoting herself too closely to the children, by insisting on reading, talking, and walking with her; and she even began to embroider a cap for the next baby, which must certainly be a girl, and be named Caroline.”
Countess Czerlaski’s delusions are shattered by the bold and outspoken criticisms of her host’s Nanny, “the maid-of-all-work, who had a warm heart and a still warmer temper.”
“The Countess was stunned for a few minutes, but when she began to recall Nanny’s words, there was no possibility of avoiding very unpleasant conclusions from them, or of failing to see her position at the Vicarage in an entirely new light. The interpretation too of Nanny’s allusion to a ‘bad name’ did not lie out of the reach of her imagination, and she saw the necessity of quitting Shepperton without delay.”
It’s significant that it is the use of her imagination, stimulated by Nanny’s plain speaking, that finally propels the Countess to do the right thing.
It is Amos Barton’s deficient imagination that gets him into trouble with his parishioners, for he is unable to see how his friendship with the Countess might be construed. He is blind, too, to the offence he is causing the most influential of them with his “fertile suggestiveness as to what it would be well for them to do in the matter of the church repairs.”
George Eliot underlines this lack of imagination tellingly when she tells us how he was forced to leave his parish. His poor imagination makes his plight even harder to bear.
“O, it was hard! Just when Shepperton had become the place where he most wished to stay — where he had friends who knew his sorrows — where he lived close to Milly’s grave. To part from that grave seemed like parting with Milly a second time; for Amos was one who clung to all the material links between his mind and the past. His imagination was not vivid, and required the stimulus of actual perception.”
The next “scene” takes us back to the latter end of the eighteenth century. It tells the story of a young clergyman and a pretty Italian orphan who is adopted by Sir Christopher Cheverel and brought to live in his manor house in Shepperton. There is a melodramatic twist in Mr Gilfil’s Love-Story, which comes as a shock to the characters and to the reader. Nevertheless Mr Gilfil, the clergyman, draws from it a deeply philosophical conclusion. We are not evil, he tells Caterina, unless we do evil. The utterance is not entirely free of George Eliot’s irony, for Mr Gilfil’s behaviour throughout the story has demonstrated restraint. He hides his feelings until he is at last able to express them without causing harm. Is his behaviour in the end harmful to Caterina Sarti? George Eliot ultimately suggests not. The tragedy for Caterina is that, in spite of her passionate feelings and strong sense of self-worth, everyone in the story treats her to a greater or lesser extent as a ‘black-eyed monkey’, and a ‘little simpleton.’ But George Eliot’s empathy, humanity and compassion are everywhere in evidence. For her, deep passionate love, early sorrow and quiescent old age are just part of the human landscape. Mr Gilfil, we are told, “had been sketched out by nature as a noble tree” and his love for Caterina is presented as a bright spot in a wholly respectable and good life.
The third “scene”, Janet’s Repentance, is really a short novel. It is dense with ideas and characters. Some of these ideas can be hard for us to understand since they are to do with variations in Christian teaching that fractured the Church of England in the nineteenth century. These doctrines are the cause of deep divisions even in the small town of Milby, where dissent was “of a lax and indifferent kind” and where “many of the middle-aged inhabitants, male and female, often found it impossible to keep up their spirits without a very abundant supply of stimulants.” The factions engage in a “sort of warfare”, “poisoned with calumny”, which causes “ugly stories” to circulate and much of the story is told through the gossip of its characters.
The catalyst for the events in the story is the arrival of Mr. Edgar Tryan, who is the first clergyman to bring the infection of Evangelicalism to the town. The town divides into “two zealous parties, the Tryanites and the anti-Tryanites.”
Janet is married to the anti-Tryanite ringleader, Robert Dempster, a drunken lawyer who breaks out into violence and drives his carriage too fast, “flogging his galloping horse like a madman.”
Janet, who married him in spite of the opposition of her friends, is seen as a good woman even though she, too, needs to drink. “When a woman can’t think of her husband coming home without trembling, it’s enough to make her drink something to blunt her feelings…” Even Mr. Tryan has noticed that Janet “is really an interesting-looking woman” and “goes among the poor a good deal.”
The tragic circumstances that are to come are already foreshadowed in the gossip of the townsfolk but George Eliot unfolds the details of the plot with extraordinary insight, sensitivity and skill. The story is laced with dark humour and her authorial voice can sometimes be surprisingly sharp and almost cruel. But the warmth of her compassion always comes to the fore in the most poignant parts of the story and we are reminded, in the end, of her purpose to reveal the poetry as well as the tragedy in the lives of ordinary people.
George Eliot often addresses us as her equals. Of course, we are not. Even such notable writers as Elizabeth Gaskell felt humbled by the forceful imagination George Eliot unleashed in these stories. “I think I have a feeling,” she wrote in a letter in 1863, “that it is not worth while trying to write, while there are such books as Adam Bede and Scenes of Clerical Life — I set Janet’s Repentance above all, still.”
I think Elizabeth Gaskell was right. This is a very fine book and a truly astonishing debut.