"TWO GEORGES AND THE DRAGON" THE HEROINE'S JOURNEY IN THE NOVELS OF GEORGE SAND AND GEORGE ELIOT TWO GEORGES AND THE DRAGON: THE HEROINE'S JOURNEY IN SELECTED NOVELS OF GEORGE SAND AND GEORGE ELIOT By D. A. WILLIAMSON, B. A., M. A. A THESIS Submitted to the School of Graduate Studies in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy McMaster University (c) Copyright by D. A. Williamson. January 1998. DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (1998) MCMASTER UNIVERSITY (English) Hamilton, Ontario TITLE: "Two Georges and the Dragon"--The Heroine's Journey in Selected Novels of George Sand and George Eliot. AUTHOR: D. A. Williamson, B. A., M.A. (McMaster University) SUPERVISOR: Dr. John Ferns NUMBER OF PAGES: vi, 235 (ii) ABSTRACT A critical study which links George Eliot to George Sand is not a new idea. While considerations of social thought, art, feminism and the imagery used by the two novelists have formed much of the comparative criticism to date, this study examines another vital link between the French and the British novelist. "Two Georges and the Dragon" focuses on the psycho-spiritual evolution, the individuation process, experienced by four Sand-Eliot heroines. The nineteenth century's concern with "Soul-Making" (Keats, 334 ), its search for self and certitude in the face of social, religious and technological change, fostered a widespread artistic renovation of both pagan and Christian myth. Thus, while Carl Jung's terminology for the stages of individuation was not yet available to either Sand or Eliot, the mythic archetypes essential for a Jungian exploration of the psyche were. It is from this archetypal perspective that the sequence of "the -heroine's journey" is developed. Maureen Murdock's The Heroine's Journey (1990) depicts the twentieth­ century version of the feminine quest for individuation. Despite separation by a century-and-a-half, the Sand-Eliot protagonists' struggles to attain an "informed sympathy'' are strikingly similar to the contemporary "heroine's journey" toward an integrated consciousness. Murdock's archetypal sequence illustrates precisely how "history (becomes] incarnate" in these nineteenth-century heroines. A progression through a series of initiatory stages marks the individuation process. To be sure, some measure of ego deflation and subsequent renewed perspective do occur for many characters in both Sand's and Eliot's novels. In these cases, shadow aspects of the unconscious emerge and are assimilated. (iii) However, our concern is with the heroines who undergo a complete cycle of individuation. In Jungian terms, these heroines not only acknowledge personal shadow content, they also undergo an ultimate ego deflation in depth. The process involves an encounter with, and assimilation of, the collective historical values inherent in the imago Dei, central archetype of the psyche's unconscious aspect. As a result of her personal individuation, the heroine, in turn, effects an elevation of consciousness in those around her. George Sand's Consuela offers the nineteenth century's first depiction of a complete individuation process for the feminine. This study proposes that the same process marks the experiences of the heroines in George Eliot's The Mill on the Floss, Romola and Middlemarch. (iv) Acknowledgments My thanks to Dr. John Ferns, Dr. James Dale, Dr. Maqbool Aziz and Professor Owen Morgan, whose generous support, patience and encouragement kept me on the quest path to complete this thesis. To Doris and Dal: I am grateful for the contraries which have fostered my growth, to emerge finally both a "father's daughter'' and the heiress to my mother's legacy of courage. To Robb: The homme-mere of my life, I've been waiting for you for ever so long .... I'm glad you've finally arrived. To Bill, Bob, Scarlett and Jackie and to the many others who continue to help me learn to live "without the opium" ... one day at a time. (v) TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION Redefining the Heroine--Nineteenth Century Myth-Making-­ The Sand-Eliot Connection--" History Incarnate"--The Quest for Individuation 1 CHAPTER ONE A Romantic Quest: George Sand's Consuela 54 CHAPTER TWO A Country Quest: George Eliot's The Mill on the Floss 97 CHAPTER THREE A Renaissance Quest: George Eliot's Romola 135 CHAPTER FOUR A Town Quest: George Eliot's Middlemarch 177 CONCLUSION "Myth Incarnate" and Its Implications 226 LIST OF WORKS CONSUL TED 235 (vi) TWO GEORGES AND THE DRAGON Call the world if you please, 'The vale of Soul-making.' Then you will find out the use of the world .... I say 'Soul-making' Soul as distinguished from an Intelligence--There may be intelligences...but they are not Souls...till they acquire identities, till each one is personally itself.... Do you not see how necessary a World of Pains and troubles is to school an Intelligence and make it a Sour? A place where the heart must feel and suffer in a thousand diverse ways .... How then are Souls to be made? How, but by the medium of a world like this? (Keats, 334-335) The heroine's end is not always what we would have it be. George Sand's Consuela renounces her career in opera. George Eliot's Maggie Tulliver dies young, an unfortunate victim of rampant nature and mechanization. Eliot's Romola does not emerge as Renaissance Florence's leading philosopher or stateswoman; nor is Dorothea Brooke the member of her family who becomes an important British politician. Yet, such accomplishments might well be expected, given the ardent and aspiring nature of these four heroines. Instead, venturing beyond the heroine's mere ego fulfillment, both Sand and Eliot depict the vicissitudes of a process in which "the Intelligence--the human heart.. .and the World or Elemental space ... act...on each other.. .for a series of years ... for the purpose of forming the Sour (Keats, 335). While Keats' depiction of "Soul-making" is reminiscent of a three-element alchemical interaction, George Eliot's perception of the process incorporates an hermetic note. She determines that the soul ranges between "the windows of heaven and the fountains of the great deep" to ensure that its "poetry or religion ... may be a real everflowing .. .fresh ... river" (letters 1, 264). In an effort to 1 2 explain the pattern of soul development in the Eliot heroines, Helena Granlund's study, The Paradox of Self-Love: Christian Elements in George Eliot's Treatment of Egoism ( 1994), illustrates a continuous cycle of the seemingly-antithetical "renunciation and the fulfillment of self," which culminates in a new identity of "higher egoism" (75). Using a Jungian approach which incorporates the alchemical, the hermetic and the resolution of polarities inherent in Grandlund's "higher egoism," this thesis examines what has not yet been considered in Sand­ Eliot studies, the actual stages of psycho-spiritual progression which mark the heroine's quest. In effect, "Two Georges and the Dragon" proposes that the Sand-Eliot heroines' experiences constitute the archetypal sequence of individuation for the feminine. A series of partially-resolved issues from previous Sand-Eliot literary criticism has led to the formulation of this study. To begin with, one might question why George Sand and her novel, Consuelo, have been selected for use in an archetypal study of the Eliot heroine. In George Sand and the Victorians: Her Influence and Reputation in Nineteenth-century England (1977), Patricia Thomson states that it is "indisputable" [that} George Eliot. ..was deeply and intimately influenced by George Sand, from her first novel to her last" (160). Thomson's study (152-184) examines the "many, many echoes of George Sand...throughout Eliot's writings" (181) and, then, considers the particular importance of Consuelo, which, Thomson determines, bears a "considerable relevance...to the entire corpus of George Eliot's novels" (164). This thesis seeks to further Thomson's argument about Consuelo's "considerable relevance" to Eliot's works by examining the archetypal patterns which govern the Sand-Eliot heroine's psycho-spiritual development process, her individuation. As the 3 nineteenth century's first and most widely read Romantic "novel of initiation" (Naginski, 190), one which illustrates the pattern of "individuation" for the feminine (Vieme and Bourgeois in Consuela, 35), Sand's Consuelo illustrates the successive changes of consciousness which the heroine undergoes both in the context of her formal initiations and in her everyday experiences. The initiatory nature of daily existence, with its inflations and deflations, constitutes a vital element in the individuation process; and, in the end, only the individuated psyche comes to possess the dual vision capable of recognizing "history (or myth) incarnate" within the self. Of all Sand's novels, only Consuelo can be deemed "a reservoir of myths" (Naginski, 205), Sand's "attempt to verbalize the great myths of the Romantic collective unconscious" (Naginski, 7). In addition, as David Carroll reminds us in his George Eliot and the Conflict of Interpretations (1992), there is a continuance of "a commonplace of romantic thought in Victorian literature, especially in the account of the individual life [as] a vale of soul-making [in which] periods of holistic joy alternate with the aridities of dejection as the evolving self continues its search for, and creation of, more and more comprehensive meanings" (1992, 3). As Carroll notes, this "model was most memorably redefined for the Victorians by Carlyle in Sartor Resartus (1833-34)" (1992, 3). Despite the fact that neither Sand nor Carlyle "would have relished ... their alliance as vital...presences" in the development of Eliot's fiction, their joint influence is nevertheless apparent (Thomson, 153). An archetypal approach to a study of the Sand-Eliot heroine is also suggested by the mythic pre-Christian and Christian images with which both novelists describe their female protagonists' development.