ELIOT AND DARWIN
Darwin’s web (spider spins its own web, feeling reverberations from
one part of the web, or a tapestry where there is unity in diversity) In
1859 Darwin published on the origin of species, Eliot read this
carefully.
To understand life as a system (ecology) Darwin had four things which
mattered, origin, kinship, environment, and variation. Variations –
inherited traits affect the fitness of individual organisms in different
ways. What Eliot found appealing is that these four things are always
in action.
Comparing origanisms that look similar but are different, how they
compete for resources status and sex
Gilian Beer treated Darwin as a literary writer –
SYMPHONIC FORM
The symphony and the opera are like the novel in their ambition.
Musicians and composers – everything in the piece of music is
connected to everything else – in subtle ways, a tune may be
manipulated in everyway, sped up, slowed down etc. so there is some
coherence.
How does the novelist have a world with coherence?
The end is the beginning –
Dickens is good at character tags – something they always say, or do.
Eliot does this – Will surrounded by women and children, often
described with sun. Or Mary Garth has a comic irony in her speech, or
Fred always weighed down with worries – they are not accidental
contrasts – think about what comes in what order. The move from one
character to another.
Dorothea sees Casaubon in her own home, then in his home, then in
Rome – Dorothea coming to know Casubon in three settings. First
Casaubon is presented to the reader as a portrait of Locke, then in a
disembodied letter, then he denies his voice to Dorothea (ends where it
begins)
Dorothea looks up to him, then as equal, then as down on him.
THE SOCIAL MAP OF MIDDLEMARCH
What is the whole of Middlemarch? It is set in the 1830s, around the
French Revolution – it was destabilising because it sought to overturn
everything – it was shocking to people in Britain because we have an
anti revolutionary history – the British memory is very scarred by
revolution. The British system that emerged from this is gradual re
balancing and balancing
Reform is the key word not revolution. Yet the French revolution was a
threat to Britain and the class system.
, The young and the hungry will prevail the French thought – in Britain
there was a major tension between the inheritance of money and land
and earning money through factories etc. (tainted trade in the mills).
There is a tension between the land owning families
1)The Brookes – land owning, he is the opposite of what we would
think him to be, respectable, kind, fatherly. Firstly he is a bachelor, he
has no normal nuclear family. He neglects his duty when he allows
Dorothea to marry Casaubon. In the world of work he represents the
failure of armatures, he cannot do anything by himself, he needs to
enlist lower class people to manage his affairs, ie. Caleb Garth Brooke
is the negative representation of landowning class.
2)The Chettams -This is contrasted to Sir James and Celia – they will
never leave Middlemarch. They never think about the past but live in
the present – they are kind of useless. There is not a lot of
reproduction in this novel – but they have a baby, this baby represents
the stability of certain forms of family values.
3)Cadwallader and Farebrother – These men’s main occupations of
fishing and collecting have nothing to do with them being clergymen.
4)Casaubon
5)Ladislaw – Has been disinherited. This means he is not part of the
landowning class. One way of defining a group is what it excludes. He
draws attention to the middleclass values – he has aesthetic interests,
etc yet the bohemian itself is a conventional pose. All his interest in
beauty defines him in the same way of what he is alienated from. He
doesn’t do middle-class work. D
Dorothea’s aim is to marry the right person and further his aims – she
fits into the ideal helpful woman- She represents a progressive upper
class mentality (her sympathy for Ladislaw is rooted in realising her
class has a tainted past) – she will eventually leave her class, not
completely – this is reform not radicalism.
1)The Vincys – there is a tiny gesture that they might have been
like Thornton. Fred is being bred as Magwich bred Pip to be a
gentlemen, this leaves him unfit to practise any trade.
Rosamond thinks she is marrying above her with Lidgate. Many
things are appealing about there household, there is fun pleasure
and music – not so stern.
Mrs Vincy is an inn keepers daughter so she married up. Mr
Vincy’s sister married higher to a banker. Landowning, banking,
medicine, trade, and then the garths.
2)The Garths (estate management) – Caleb is the manager of
someone else’s estate, repair and management, he owns nothing
himself. Caleb represents an argument for gradual change (fred
moves away from the Vincy and more to the Garths)
