English Language and Literature Commons^™

Report From America, Linda K. Roberston

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

The ninth annual George Eliot Dinner was held during the Modem Language Association meeting in San Francisco, California. Members of the Fellowship and friends met at Puccini and Pinetta on December 29 for excellent conversation and food. The evening included the traditional Toast to the Immortal Memory, greetings from members who could not attend, and much discussion of recent books on George Eliot and related topics. Harriet Williams located the superb Italian restaurant, which was very conveniently located, and made the arrangements.

Emma And The Countryside: Weather And A Place For A Walk, Elizabeth Toohey

Publications and Research

Raymond Williams in The Country and the City dismisses Jane Austen's depiction of the land around her as simply "weather or a place for a walk." In Emma's ideology, however, there is a tension between an ostensibly apolitical stance, which is de facto conservative in working to maintain the status quo, and the extent to which a more progressive agenda can be seen through the social mobility of certain principle characters, albeit by "conservative means." For all the leisure, picnics, and parties that constitute the greater part of Emma, labor is evident and valued. The country may be largely …

Reanimating The Creature: The Last Man As A Sequel To Frankenstein, Shannon Phillips

Masters Theses

In my thesis, I explore how Mary Shelley's The Last Man (1826) continues a critique of Romanticism that she began in her more well-known novel Frankenstein. Although Frankenstein has been read many different ways through a variety of critical methodologies, one of the central questions continually asked about the novel is whether (and to what extent) Frankenstein challenges or extends the romanticism of her husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and others in the Byron-Shelley circle. Another way to investigate this lingering question is through a comparative study of The Last Man. My preliminary thesis is that a comparative study reveals not …

Are They Fact Or Are They Fiction? The Sadeian Women Of Angela Carter, Catherine Gall

Masters Theses

Angela Carter is well-known for her gothic twists on fairy tales and the use of magical realism in creating alternate worlds and monstrous creatures that exist within our own. The meaningful "twists" that her tales take often have to do with gender, reversing traditional roles and transcending barriers. In her fiction, Carter creates characters and scenes that often include "traditional" roles, displaying an awareness of the sexual stereotypes that have been in place for centuries. Her female characters offer a complex commentary on the patriarchal standard that suggests that a woman's value is dependent upon her virginity.

Her book The …

‘Two Are Better Than One;’ Adam And Eve's Symbiotic Marriage In John Milton's Paradise Lost, Jeffrey Paul Pietruszynski

Masters Theses

Although much has been written on the roles of Adam and Eve created by John Milton in Paradise Lost, the critics, oddly enough, overlook the dependency created by the roles. This paper extends these roles further, explaining that Milton wanted to show that the roles of man and woman, husband and wife, combine to create a unit dependent on one another other for survival. As Adam himself states, when they are separated, husband and wife are vulnerable to the dangers of evil. However, together, they form a single unit, able to accomplish any task, epitomizing the symbolic relationship described in …

Androgyny Or Catastrophe: Doris Lessing's Vision In The Early 1970s, Nancy Topping Bazin

English Faculty Publications

Doris Lessing's novels of the early 1970s offer readers a rare kind of wisdom one which has been nourished by Sufism, a form of Islamic mysticism, which she admires. Unlike Lessing's earlier fiction which was simply influenced by the ideas of Sufism, three of her novels-Briefing for a Descent into Hell (1971), The Summer Before the Dark (1973), and The Memoirs of a Survivor (1974)-are literally Sufi fables-that is, symbolic stories, each of which "illuminates truth" (qtd. in Shah, The Sufis 14). The Sufi truth illuminated by these novels is that "life is One," and that because we have …

Moral Dilemmas And Cases Of Conscience : Trollope's Morality In The Warden And The Last Chronicle Of Barset, Hannah Louise Rogers

Theses : Honours

This thesis offers an exploration of Trollope's morality in The Warden and The Last Chronicle of Barset. Existing critical work which explores Trollope's morality often argues either for or against Trollope's moral relativism. This thesis argues, instead, that Trollope's morality unifies aspects of both theoretical perspectives. It reconciles the polarisation of Trollope's moral absolutism and moral relativism, taking the middle-ground. In doing so, it makes evident the contradictions and extremes in existing Trollopian criticism.

The thesis places Trollopian morality within the historical and socio-cultural context of Victorianism. It focuses on the Victorian consciousness of change, securing a definition …

The Legal Issues In Shakespeare's The Merchant Of Venice And Jonson's Volpone, Felicia A. Matthew-Stubbs

Theses : Honours

The aim of this thesis is to explore the legal issues within William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, and Ben Jonson's Volpone. I will attempt to discover the extent to which both plays can be seen as indicative of English jurisprudence applicable to Early Modern England. I shall commence by investigating The Merchant of Venice through outlining the process of signing and sealing a contract, defining the roles of The Court of Chancery and The Court of Common Law and relating the judgements made by Portia and the Court to statutes, precedents and procedures applicable to the sixteenth and seventeenth …

Loneliness Underneath Laughter : Aspects Of Alienation In The Early Plays Of Tom Stoppard, Steven Hounsome

Theses : Honours

This thesis investigates the various states of alienation that exist in the early plays of the British dramatist Tom Stoppard. By first defining alienation (and discussing the areas of contention which surround the concept), it proceeds to argue that whilst Stoppard has been greatly revered as a comic writer his works are equally consequential for their sensitivity and insight. They depict a prolificacy of characters who fail to assimilate with their society, can no longer relate to those around them and, as is often the case, reach for, but never manage to grasp a sense of their own identity. The …

The Devil And Jane Austen: Elizabeth Bennet's Temptations In The Wildnerness, Laura Dabundo

Faculty Articles

No abstract provided.

George Eliot Birthday Luncheon: The Toast To The Immortal Memory 1998, Tenniel Evans

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Sixty-two years ago, almost to the day - a freezing 25 November 1936 - I arrived at the London docks from Africa and came, without realizing it at the time, to live in the country of my background. I was to live with Alison and Rupert Winser and their family in the Rectory at Allesley, just outside Coventry, and it became my home for the next five years. By the end of that time, of course, the war had blown away the old life and it would never be the same again. So I was lucky that at least I …

Resolving The "Hateful Siege/Of Contrarie": The Regeneration Of Ideal Desire In Milton's Paradise Lost, Jody Lawton

Honors Capstone Projects and Theses

No abstract provided.

Wreath-Laying In Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey 1998, Roy Hattersley

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

I take a strange pleasure in being associated, no matter how vicariously, with the greatest novelist in the English language. I am by no means sure that she would approve of this event. Asked about God, Immortality and Duty - strange topics of conversation to be raised during an afternoon's stroll - 'she pronounced with terrible earnestness how inconceivable was the first, how unbelievable the second and how peremptory and absolute the third'. But there she is in black, polished marble on the floor of Westminster Abbey - the junkyard of the nation's vanities.

She keeps appropriate company, in a …

Feminism And The Public Sphere In Anne Brontë'S The Tenant Of Wildfell Hall, Rachel Carnell

English Faculty Publications

The bipartite narrative structure of Anne Brontë's 'The Tenant of Wildfell Hall' (1848) has been interpreted recently as an attempt to subvert the traditional Victorian rubric of separate spheres. Reconsidering this novel in terms of Jürgen Habermas's concept of the 18th-century public sphere broadens the historical context for the way we understand the separate spheres. Within Brontë's critique of Victorian gender roles, we may identify a reluctance to address the Chartist-influenced class challenges to an older version of the public good. In hearkening back to an 18th-century model of the public sphere, Brontë espouses not so much a 20th-century-style challenge …

Wreath-Laying In The George Eliot Memorial Garden Nuneaton, May 1998, Margaret Jennings

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

In paying tribute to George Eliot today we acknowledge a debt of gratitude owed to her for the legacy of wonderful novels which have enriched so many lives during both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

As we approach the twenty-first century I find myself considering how her work will be greeted by the coming generations, indeed not just in a new century but in a new millenium.

In the early part of this century, the Bloomsbury writer Virginia Woolf helped restore George Eliot's standing as a great novelist by claiming that Middlemarch was one of the few novels for grown-up …

"They Always Leave Us’: Lord Jim, Colonialist Discourse, And Conrad's Magic Naturalism, Richard Ruppel

English Faculty Articles and Research

"Today, this information about Jewel's origins and her great fear that Jim will desert her because he is white and she is not must be gleaned rather painstakingly from the novel. But Conrad's contemporary readers would have understood her situation and her fear immediately, for the instability of white/non-white romances is a very common trope of late-nineteenth century colonialist fiction. In colonialist stories, the white man always leaves, and the non-white woman often knows that he will."

Joseph Conrad And The Ghost Of Oscar Wilde, Richard Ruppel

English Faculty Articles and Research

"Conrad walks a similar tight- rope in his exploration of the homosocial continuum--pushing out the boundaries a little and then pulling back to accommodate a conventional audience that would have been hostile to a more overt exploration. In other words, Conrad could only press his artistic investigations of the potential relationships between men so far because those investigations were threatened by the ghost of Oscar Wilde."

Clarissa's Treasonable Correspondence: Gender, Epistolary Politics, And The Public Sphere, Rachel Carnell

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Orts 48, 1998, The George Macdonald Society

Orts: The George MacDonald Society Newsletter

As last year, the 1998 A.G.M. of the Society will be held at St Stephen's Church, Westbourne Park Road, London W2. The date and time has been fixed as October 16th at 7 pm for 7.15. St Stephens is near the eastern end of Westbourne Park Road, a few hundred yards from Royal Oak Station, which is on the Hammersmith and City Line. Turn left out of the station and Westbourne Park Road is the second road on the right.

Orts 47, 1998, The George Macdonald Society

Orts: The George MacDonald Society Newsletter

The endeavour, mentioned in Orts 46, to supply members with an alternative MacDonald magazine until Tim Braithwaite is able to take up the reins did not succeed. It is essential that Orts should have an editor skilled in popular journalism who can stimulate contributions and create a lively magazine. Such people are not easy to find. Tim remains as keen as ever and should be returning before the year's end. Full approval has been given for the sort of developments he is planning.

Orts 46, 1998, The George Macdonald Society

Orts: The George MacDonald Society Newsletter

Adela workshops explore the penetrating spiritual/psychological insights of MacDonald's fairy tales and seek to discover how they can be put to direct practical use in everyday situations. Following the very successful workshop on Adela Cathcart held in Massachusetts in 1995 we hope to hold a similar workshop focusing on The Lost Princess (The Wise Woman) in New Hampshire or Maine in July 1998. Workshops actively involve all participants, there are no lectures. The Lost Princess is particularly suited for such an approach. MacDonald has written the story in such a way that it is impossible for readers not to imagine …

Orts 49, 1998, The George Macdonald Society

Orts: The George MacDonald Society Newsletter

David Robb has been able to make contact with the editorial board responsible for bringing out the 1998 North Wind and has been informed that it should be published early in 1999. We are sorry for the delay.

Does Anyone Know Lord Byron?, Dianne Marie Waylett

Theses Digitization Project

No abstract provided.

Romantic Agonies: Human Suffering And The Ethical Sublime, Terryl Givens, Anthony P. Russell

English Faculty Publications

This essay examines two poems depicting human anguish in order to explore a current in Romantic thought that implicitly yields some original and compelling insights regarding the problematic relationship between art and suffering. The focus is primarily on Wordsworth's narrative of Margaret's suffering in The Excursion, then more briefly on Shelley's Prometheus Unbound. In both cases Kant's ideas about the sublime provide us with a useful perspective from which to understand the issues these poems raise.

Obituary- Ezell

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

We are sad to report the death on February 23rd. of Dr. Ezell at his home in Vermont. He had been one of our most supportive and active members. In the early 1970's a literary lady wrote a somewhat patronising letter to the Times Literary Supplement about the Fellowship's efforts to raise funds for a memorial stone to George Eliot in Westminster Abbey. It was read in the United States by Dr. Ezell. He felt so strongly about the dismissive tone of the letter that he immediately became a life member of the Fellowship, enrolled some of his patients, appealed …

The Idea Of An English Gentleman: Mr. Knightley And Arthur Donnithorne, David Ball

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

My modest purpose in this essay is to develop the interesting suggestion of Ellen Moers in Literary Women that George Eliot's inspiration to write Adam Bede may well have lain in her attentive reading of Emma: that Adam Bede himself is the heroic and detailed portrait of Robert Martin that Emma has no place for. George Eliot's father, Robert Evans, was a mari similar to Robert Martin and Adam Bede, in both status and ability, and the creation of Adam is Eliot's first fictional tribute to him. Ellen Moers also briefly compares Harriet Smith and Hetty Sorrel as sharing 'the …

The George Eliot Review: Journal Of The George Eliot Fellowship 1998 No. 29, Beryl Gray, John Rignall

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

CONTENTS

Notes on Contributors ...................................................................................... 5

REPORTS Kathleen Adams: Annual Report 1997 ........................................... 7

Shoshana Milgram Knapp: American Branch Report.................................... 14

ADDRESSES Ruth Harris: Address at the wreath-laying in the George Eliot Memorial Garden, 15 June 1997 ................................................. 15

Carol A. Martin: Address at the wreath-laying in Westminster Abbey, 21 June 1997 .......................................................................... 18

Gillian Beer: The Twenty-Sixth George Eliot Memorial Lecture, 11 October 1997................................................ 24

Geoffrey Beevers: The Toast to the Immortal Memory: George Eliot Birthday Luncheon, 23 November 1997........................................ .30

ARTICLES David Malcolm: 'Grand and Vague': Why is Daniel Deronda about the Jews? (Prize-winning Essay)................................................................................ .33

David Bell: …

Wordsworth And The Victorians, Stephen Gill

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Words worth belongs to a generation that re-invented posterity as the true judge of artistic worth, a truth beyond fashion and faction, the eternal justification of a misunderstood life. His exact contemporary Holderlin asked 'Wozu Dichter in diirftiger Zeit, meaning, among other things, why be a poet in an age that does not know how to value poetry? Romantic poets invested very heavily in the future, and for that reason, leaving aside others, their reception makes a fascinating study, full of veneration, misprision, irony, bathos, creative imitation and unconscious symbiosis.

Stephen Gill's book IS about both the Victorianization of Words …

Baraba Leigh-Smith Bodichon: Feminist, Artist And Rebel, Pam Hirsch

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

It is impossible not to be impressed by Barbara Leigh-Smith Bodichon. Her life is interesting for its diversity, rather than for any single accomplishment, and therefore she has posed a challenge for biographers. Most accounts of Bodichon, such as Sheila Hemstein's A Mid- Victorian Feminist: Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon (1985) and Candida Ann Lacey's collection, Barbara Bodichon and the Langham Place Group (1987), have focused on her activities as a social reformer. The first complete biography since Hester Burton's Barbara Bodichon, 1827- 1891 (1949), is Pam Hirsch's Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon: Feminist, Artist and Rebel. Hirsch recognizes the relative neglect …

A Note Of Daniel Deronda's Circumcision, Derek Miller

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

For the last twenty years or so critics have wondered if Daniel Deronda, the eponymous hero of George Eliot's last novel, was circumcised or not. If he was, he would scarcely have to wait for his mother's revelations to know he was a Jew. Some commentators, however, say that, for medical reasons, circumcision was not uncommon among middle class people at the time of Deronda's infancy, and he might therefore not have given much attention to the matter.

Professor John Sutherland, recently entering this lively discussion! points to the rebellion by Deronda's mother against her father's Judaism as a prime …