Was George Eliot a romantic writer?

Was George Eliot a Romantic Writer? A Reconsideration

The question of George Eliot’s place within the Romantic tradition is a complex one, often met with a hesitant “no.” While she arrived on the literary scene after Romanticism’s commonly accepted heyday, a closer examination reveals a fascinating intellectual kinship with the movement’s later, more radical expressions. Rather than viewing her as simply a Victorian realist, we might more accurately understand Eliot as an inheritor and transformer of Romanticism’s core concerns.

It’s true that Eliot’s novels, with their meticulous social realism and psychological depth, appear to stand in stark contrast to the soaring lyricism and emphasis on individual experience characteristic of early Romantics like Wordsworth and Coleridge. However, Romanticism was not a monolithic entity. As the movement matured, it fractured and diversified, pushing its initial impulses towards new and sometimes contradictory ends. Eliot’s intellectual journey aligned closely with this evolution, particularly with the movement’s increasingly radical fringes.

One key area of connection lies in the Romantic preoccupation with the individual’s relationship to the world. While early Romantics often focused on the sublime power of nature and the individual’s emotional response to it, later figures like Byron and Shelley explored the complexities of individual freedom and social responsibility. Eliot inherited this concern, transmuting it into a profound exploration of the individual’s moral and social embeddedness. Her characters, from Dorothea Brooke in Middlemarch to Maggie Tulliver in The Mill on the Floss, grapple with the tension between personal desires and societal expectations, reflecting the evolving Romantic interest in the interplay between individual agency and social structures.

Furthermore, Eliot shared the Romantic fascination with the power of imagination and sympathy. While she rejected the more idealistic notions of inherent human goodness, she recognized the vital role of imagination in fostering ethical understanding. Her novels are meticulously crafted to cultivate empathy in the reader, encouraging us to step into the shoes of her diverse characters and understand their motivations, even when we don’t condone their actions. This emphasis on imaginative engagement with the other echoes the Romantic belief in the transformative power of art and its capacity to bridge human divides.

Finally, Eliot’s deep engagement with philosophical and scientific thought, particularly her interest in positivism and evolutionary theory, might appear to further distance her from Romanticism. However, these intellectual pursuits can be seen as a continuation of the Romantic quest for knowledge and understanding of the human condition. The Romantic fascination with the natural world and the mysteries of consciousness found new expression in the scientific and philosophical explorations of the Victorian era, and Eliot was at the forefront of this intellectual ferment.

Therefore, instead of viewing George Eliot as simply reacting against Romanticism, we might more fruitfully consider her as engaging in a complex dialogue with its legacy. She inherited its core concerns – the individual’s relationship to society, the power of imagination and sympathy, and the pursuit of knowledge – and reconfigured them within the intellectual and social landscape of the Victorian era. In doing so, she not only extended the reach of Romantic thought but also offered a powerful and enduring vision of human experience that continues to resonate today.