The Use of the Bible in George Eliot's Fiction Dissertation
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IAd) THE USE OF THE BIBLE IN GEORGE ELIOT'S FICTION DISSERTATION Presented to the Graduate Council of the North Texas State University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY By Jesse C. Jones, B. A., M. A. Denton, Texas May, 1975 Copyright by Jesse C. Jones 1975 Jones, Jesse C., The Use of the Bible in Gem Eliot's Fiction. Doctor of Philosophy (English), May, 1975, 287 pp., bibliography, 143 titles. The purpose of this study is to demonstrate George Eliot's literary indebtedness to the Bible by isolating, identifying, and analyzing her various uses of Scripture in her novels. Chapter I is devoted to a statement of purpose and to an indication of overall organization. Chapter II traces George Eliot's acquisition of biblical knowledge through three stages: church attendance and familial influence during preschool years, the association with and influence of Evangelical teachers during the years of formal education, and finally the intense study of the Bible and related writings during the years following her schooling. Although her estimate of the Bible changed with the renunciation of Evangelical Christianity, George Eliot continued to read, revere, and draw upon the Bible throughout her career as a novelist. Chapter III demonstrates George Eliot's use of Bibles in Adam Bede and The Mill on the Floss for purposes of characteri- zation and symbolism. Characters who read the Bible provide both comic relief and serious thematic emphasis. In Chapters IV-VI, uses of biblical quotations, phrases, and allusions are analyzed. Quotations are few but effective: 1 2 they appear as epigraphs, serving as organic explications of the prefaced passages; they sharpen the characterization of such characters as Dinah Morris and Rufus Lyon; they occa- sionally provide humor. Biblical phrases serve basically the same purposes as quotations. They are used for epigraphs, for characterization, for authorial commentary, and for poetic effect. Numerous allusions are also used with ease and effectiveness to suit George Eliot's purpose of the moment and to enhance her fiction. Chapter VII identifies and analyzes symbols drawn from the Bible. From the Old Testament, there recur in Eliot's writings symbols of Eden, of the flood, of the wilderness and the promised land. From the New Testament, there appear symbols of temptation, of conversion, and--standing preeminent among George Eliot's biblical images--the cross. In Chapter VIII, George Eliot's use of the Bible in character delineation is divided into three facets: signi- ficant use of biblical names such as Adam, Hephzibah, and Esther; use of a specific biblical character or type, as with the prophets Savonarola and Mordecai and the Christ figure Daniel Deronda; and use of various biblical characters to create fictional characters, as with Tom and Maggie Tulliver, Dinah Morris, and Adam Bede. Chapter IX identifies the basic themes in George Eliot's fiction as the essentially biblical ones of duty, sowing and reaping, sympathy, renunciation, conversion, and suffering. 3 The biblical elements used to convey each theme are iden- tified and discussed. In addition to summarizing points made in previous chapters, Chapter X suggests that no significant change took place in Eliot's use of the Bible from first fictional work to last. Moreover, no particular portions of the Bible seem favored by Eliot over others. Rather, the fictional situ- ation and character dictate the type of biblical material used. George Eliot's grasp of the Bible was expert enough to allow use of the obscure facts and characters as well as the well known ones. The King James Bible pervades George Eliot's fiction, and is perhaps the most important single source from which she drew. TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page I. INTRODUCTION . 1 II. GEORGE ELIOT'S KNOWLEDGE OF THE BIBLE . 10 III. GEORGE ELIOT'S FICTIONAL USES OF BIBLES AND BIBLE READERS . ... 0 31 IV. BIBLICAL QUOTATIONS IN GEORGE ELIOT'S NOVELS . L4. V. GEORGE ELIOT'S USE OF BIBLICAL PHRASEOLOGY . 68 VI. BIBLICAL ALLUSIONS IN ELIOT'S FICTION . 93 VII. BIBLICAL SYMBOLISM IN ELIOT'S FICTION . 142 VIII. ELIOT'S USE OF THE BIBLE IN CHARACTERIZATION . ... 0 . 185 IX. GEORGE ELIOT'S THEMES AND THE BIBLE . 242 270 X. CONCLUSION . " . BIBLIOGRAPHY . .*. 0 - 278 iii CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION There has been no greater single influence on English literature than the Bible. From Old English times to the present, from Beowulf and Bede to James Joyce and T. S. Eliot, the Bible has served as source for subject matter, theme, character, symbol, allusion, quotation, and phraseology in prose and poetry. As Henrietta Tichy has observed, Caedmon's Biblical paraphrases marked the first appearance of that golden thread of Scriptural in- fluence that was to brighten and enrich the whole tapestry of English literature. for the most part it has been one of the richest and most beautiful threads in the tapestry. Among the most resplendent segments of this tapestry is the Victorian period, a literary era in which the "golden thread of Scriptural influence" shines brightly. The thread is artistically interwoven into such variegated poems as Keble's The Christian Year, Browning's "An Epistle to Karshish," Swinburne's "Hymn to Proserpine," Clough's "The Latest Deca- such logue," and Tennyson's In Memoriam. In Victorian prose, widely differing writers--both in ideas and in style--as as Carlyle, Newman, Ruskin, and Arnold all draw on the Bible 1 Biblical Influences in English Literature: A Survey of Studies (Ann Arbor: Edwards Brothers,T1953), p. iii. 1 2 demonstrates his an important source. Arnold, for instance, when he writes, "It looked reliance upon biblical phraseology Beaconsfield's, and sees, in Byron's glass as it looks in Lord then it goes or fancies that it sees, its own face there; and of man it saw. its way and straightway forgets what manner acknowledges his And Ruskin, in Fors Clavigera, explicitly involuntary indebtedness to the Bible: of my Walter Scott and Pope's Homer were reading daily own election, but my mother forced me, by steady heart, as toil, to learn long chapters of the Bible by every syllable through, aloud, hard well as to read it about names and all, from Genesis to the Apocalypse, accurate, once a year; and to that discipline--patient, and resolute--I owe not only a knowledge of the book, of my which I find occasionally serviceable, but much best part of my general power of taking pains, and the taste in literature. From Walter Scott's novels I might easily, as I grew older, have fallen to other people's me to take novels; and Pope might, perhaps, have led Johnson's English, or Gibbon's, as types of language; once knowing the 32nd of Deuteronomy, the 119th but, Sermon on the Psalm, the 15th of 1st Corinthians, the Mount, and most of the Apocalypse, every syllable by and having always a way of thinking with myself heart, even in what words meant, it was not possible for me, super- the foolishest times of youth, to write entirely ficial or formal English. .3 prose What is true of Victorian poets and nonfiction The fabric writers is true as well of Victorian novelists. of 2Matthew Arnold, "Byron," in Poetry and Criticism Arnold, ed. A. Dwight Culler (Boston: Houghton Matthew , King James Mifflin 1961), p. 361. Compare James 1:23-214 "For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, Version: face in a glass. he is like unto a man beholding his natural straightway for he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and forgetteth what manner of man he was. 3 John Ruskin, Fors Clavigera, Letters 1-36, Vol. XXVII Cook and of The Complete Works of John Ruskin, ed. E. T. 1907), Alexander Wedderburn, 39 vole. (London: George Allen, pp. 167-168. 3 with of their fictional creations is similarly interlaced this biblical thread. The Bible serves as an influence upon St. such diverse character creations as Charlotte Bronte's John Rivers and Thomas Hardy's Bathsheba Everdene; such sym- bolic acts as Rochester's conversion by fire in J En and little Tom's regeneration by water in The Water Babies; such 5 mottoes as Hardy's "The letter killeth" in Jude the Obscure; and such scenes as the death of Sydney Carton in Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities: "I am the Resurrection and the Life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet in me shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth shall never die. The murmuring of many voices, the upturning of many faces, the pressing on of many footsteps in the outskirts of the crowd, so that it swells forward in a mass, like one great heave of water, all flashes away. Twenty- three. They said of him, about the city that night, that it was the peacefullest man's face ever beheld there. Many added that he looked sublime and prophetic. Virtually all major Victorian novelists drew from the Bible to some degree. Perhaps none knew it more thoroughly For a discussion of such baptismal symbolism and its Buckley, frequency in Victorian literature, see Jerome Hamilton The Victorian Temper: A Stud in Literar Culture (Cambridge: of Con- Harvard Univ. Pre, Chapter T,"The e1969PJ, attern vers ion."t 5The motto is a partial quotation of II Cor. 3:6--"Who also hath made us able ministers of the new testament;; not but of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, the spirit giveth life." The 6 Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities, Vol. XXI of Works of Charles Dickens, GadshillEdition, 34 vols.