Abstract
As stated in the previous chapter, the motivation behind many a creation of a golem was control — control of the self as much as control of others or of the environment. Golem making became a need to project an ideal self on to another created specifically for that purpose. For example, Homunculus in Faust II is intended to lack no qualities of the ideal since Wagner, his creator, is flawed. A recurrent feature of golems, however, is that they have an essential ‘flaw’ — despite the original intention of perfection — which is revealed through the creature becoming distanced from the creator, a distancing of the self from the ideal, and is often manifested in destructive acts. In the case of Romantic golems it is self-destruction (Homunculus) as well as destruction of others (Frankenstein’s monster). However, in some instances to use the word ‘flaw’ is a misrepresentation of these created beings; what the creator perceives as an imperfection is in fact an assertion of the golem’s self — the wish to be other than just the puppet or idol of the creator.
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Notes
See The Complete Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley (London, n.d.), p. 3, ‘Queen Mab’, 11. 130–3.
The idea also appears in ‘The Birthmark’, the short story by Hawthorne, an author who influenced Eliot. In ‘The Birthmark’, Aylmer, a scientist and natural philosopher, intends to remove this blemish from his wife’s cheek. He tells her: “‘There is no taint of imperfection on thy spirit. Thy sensible frame, too shall be perfect.”’ Hawthorne, Mosses from an Old Manse, Centenary Edition, Volume X (Ohio, 1974), p. 53. For discussion of Hawthorne’s influence on Eliot, see Edward Stokes, Hawthorne’s Influence on Charles Dickens and George Eliot (Queensland, 1985).
J. M. Kemble’s Saxons in England, quoted by J. M. Mackinlay, Folklore in Scottish Lochs and Springs (Glasgow, 1893), p. 163.
Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces (London, 1979), p. 239.
Matthew Arnold, Culture and Anarchy, ed. J. Dover Wilson (Cambridge, 1986), p. 72.
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© 2002 Saleel Nurbhai and K. M. Newton
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Nurbhai, S., Newton, K.M. (2002). Ideals of Perfection. In: George Eliot, Judaism and the Novels. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230288539_6
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