Abstract
Critical controversy has been a feature of Eliot’s literary legacy. This chapter considers different critical responses to her work by three of her major critics. Barbara Hardy defended the form of her novels in the face of objections, notably by Henry James. She had relatively little interest in Eliot as intellectual, even questioning whether Eliot’s agnosticism is clear-cut. Felicia Bonaparte in contrast sees Eliot as a writer whose mind was shaped by science and rationalism but believes there is conflict with her moral agenda. J. Hillis Miller reads Eliot as a proto-deconstructionist and concentrates particularly on the role of metaphors in her literary discourse. Though all have made valuable contributions to Eliot criticism, the chapter addresses certain problems with all of their positions.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
Barbara Hardy, A Critic’s Biography (2006), 124, 124–5.
- 3.
For a discussion of Eliot’s relationship with Myers which includes letters between them, see Beer (1998).
- 4.
See also Oldfield’s biography of Senior , Jeanie, an ‘Army of One’ (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2008).
- 5.
See Bernard J. Paris, ‘George Eliot’s Unpublished Poetry’, Studies in Philology, 56 (1959), 541–2.
- 6.
Felicia Bonaparte, Will and Destiny: Morality and Tragedy in George Eliot’s Novels (1995), xxii. All subsequent references are incorporated in the text.
- 7.
See preface to Deconstruction and Criticism, Harold Bloom et al., viii.
- 8.
J. Hillis Miller , Reading for Our Time: ‘Adam Bede’ and ‘Middlemarch’ Revisited, xii. All subsequent quotations included within the text.
- 9.
See J. Hillis Miller , The Form of Victorian Fiction, 83, 84–5, and chapter on ‘The Narrator as General Consciousness’.
- 10.
Myers made strenuous but unsuccessful efforts to get Eliot to consider spiritualism. See John Beer, Providence and Love.
- 11.
Cited in Peter Garratt, 183.
- 12.
- 13.
See Jacques Derrida (1987).
- 14.
For further discussion and reflection on issues related to narration, see K. M. Newton (2011).
- 15.
It is not clear whether Miller is aware that Eliot had a strong interest in cynicism. See Helen Small (2012).
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———, A Critic’s Biography (London: Continuum, 2006).
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———, Reading for Our Time: ‘Adam Bede’ and ‘Middlemarch’ Revisited (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012).
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Newton, K.M. (2018). Critical Encounters: Hardy, Bonaparte, Miller. In: George Eliot for the Twenty-First Century. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91926-3_3
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