Bodenheimer, Rosemarie. 'A Woman of Many Names' in ed. Levine, George. The Cambridge Companion to George Eliot. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. p 29. [1] Little did I know that the greater things were to be found in the second story of the series, Mr. Gilfil’s Love Story. Here is a man who did touch and pull at my heartstrings. Here is a story with depth and meaning, that keeps you captivated beginning to end. I could feel George Eliot blossoming as she wrote. Maynard Gilfil is one of the finest and sweetest characters in Eliot’s fine fiction. There is none of that tone in the Clerical Life stories. They are, instead, beautiful stories of compassion and kindness, in which the church figures are more often portrayed sympathetically than otherwise. The plot of each can be told in a sentence. In the first story, the feelings of the parishioners toward their mediocre but well-meaning curate shift from laughing disregard to tender concern after calamity befalls his household. George Eliot had a rare power for making the commonplace moving and profound, and that power was already evident in this book. When discussing the first story of Scenes of Clerical Life, ‘The Sad Fortunes of the Reverend Amos Barton’, I will not refrain from revealing aspects of the plot, although I will not discuss details of the most salient moments. For the last two stories, I will avoid spoilers when discussing their plots.

The publication of Amos Barton caused some alarm among those who – rightly or wrongly – suspected that they had been the models for the characters, few of whom are described in a flattering manner. Eliot was forced to apologise to John Gwyther, who had been the local curate in her childhood, and to whom the character of Barton himself bore more than a passing resemblance. [8] Mrs. Higgins, who was an elderly widow, 'well left', reflected with complacency that Mrs. Parrot's observation was no more than just, and that Mrs. Jennings very likely belonged to a family which had had no funerals to speak of." Reverend Edgar Tryan – the recently appointed minister at the chapel of ease at Paddiford Common. He is young, but in poor health. Theologically, he is an evangelical. He explains to Janet Dempster that he entered the Church as a result of deep grief and remorse following the death of Lucy, a young woman whom he enticed to leave her home and then abandoned. Her first published work was a religious poem. Through a family friend, she was exposed to Charles Hennell's "An Inquiry into the Origins of Christianity". Unable to believe, she conscientiously gave up religion and stopped attending church. Her father shunned her, sending the broken-hearted young dependent to live with a sister until she promised to reexamine her feelings. Her intellectual views did not, however, change. She translated Das Leben Jesu, a monumental task, without signing her name to the 1846 work.Religion plays a significant role in the lives of the characters in George Eliot’s ‘Scenes of Clerical Life’. The novel is set in the early 19th century in a rural English community where religion is deeply ingrained in the social fabric. The characters are all members of the Church of England, and their beliefs and practices are central to their daily lives. Scenes from Clerical Life, by George Eliot". The Atlantic Monthly. May 1858 . Retrieved 11 November 2008. Hardy, Barbara. The Novels of George Eliot. London: Athlone Press, 1963. Hardy’s splendid critical work remains the best introduction to Eliot’s fiction. One of Eliot’s most notable narrative techniques is her use of omniscient narration, which allows her to delve into the inner lives of her characters and provide insight into their motivations and desires. This technique is particularly effective in “Scenes of Clerical Life,” where the characters’ struggles with faith, morality, and social expectations are central to the plot.

Another character, Mr. Gilfil, is a kind-hearted vicar who is beloved by his parishioners. He is deeply committed to his faith and finds comfort in his religious beliefs, especially in times of personal tragedy. However, his faith is tested when he falls in love with a woman who is already married. Another important theme is the role of women in the Church. Eliot portrays the female characters in the story as strong and capable, but also limited by the patriarchal society in which they live. Mrs. Barton, in particular, is a complex character who struggles to support her husband while also asserting her own independence.I also kept thinking of the Virginia Woolf quote that Eliot’s Middlemarch was “one of the few English novels written for grown-up people,” which I believe applies to all of Eliot’s work. What does Woolf mean by this? One possibility is that being a grown-up is about handling the truth: things don’t happen the way you plan; everyone dies; people are more complicated than you think they are. Eliot is particularly good at that last one. In each of the novellas in Scenes of Clerical Life, the village of Milby struggles with these issues, most starkly in “Janet’s Repentance.” The Evangelical clergymen Amos Barton, Maynard Gilfil, and Tryan represent the freedom from stifling liturgy and corrupt episcopal power of the Anglican Church. Although Eliot portrays each cleric as less than heroic, each of them brings new perspectives on the meaning of true religion to Milby. True religion, in these novellas, is the religion of kindness and humanity. Sources for Further Study The culmination is reached in “Janet’s Repentance.” By this time your heart has been pummeled by the first two “scenes,” and you are ready for a happy ending. But Eliot, true to form, has created a real life heroine and hero. They struggle with their own “sins” and their purgatory is harrowing, but this final installment ends with a beautiful triumph of the soul. In short, Eliot attempts to excise the modern sensibilities and assumptions of her audience – its sophisticated cynicisms and narrow interests she seems to assume – to embrace a narrative about an England now bygone or going:

The emotions, I have observed, are but slightly influenced by arithmetical considerations: the mother, when her sweet lisping little ones have all been taken from her one after another, and she is hanging over her last dead babe, finds small consolation in the fact that the tiny dimpled corpse is but one of a necessary average, and that a thousand other babes brought into the world at the same time are doing well, and are likely to live; and if you stood beside that mother—if you knew her pang and shared it—it is probable you would be equally unable to see a ground of complacency in statistics. Ah,' said Mrs. Parrot, who was conscious of inferiority in this respect, 'there isn't many families as have had so many deaths as yours, Mrs. Higgins.' Local lawyer Robert Dempster opposes Tryan and his kind of religion. Dempster hatches an anti-Tryan plan at the Red Lion pub, where he drinks steadily and heavily every night. Janet Dempster, Robert’s wife, supports her husband in his crusade until she meets Tryan one day. When they exchange glances, Janet recognizes the soul of a fellow sufferer.

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But it is with men as with trees: if you lop off their finest branches, into which they were pouring their young life-juice, the wounds will be healed over with some rough boss, some odd excrescence; and what might have been a grand tree expanding into liberal shade, is but a whimsical misshapen trunk. Many an irritating fault, many an unlovely oddity, has come of a hard sorrow, which has crushed and maimed the nature just when it was expanding into plenteous beauty… Mr Gilfil's Love Story". Movies & TV Dept. The New York Times. 2011. Archived from the original on 21 May 2011 . Retrieved 11 November 2008.

a b Landow, George P. (14 October 2002). "Typology in Victorian Fiction". Victorian Web . Retrieved 11 November 2008. Most men and probably most women too would think this is harsh against Barton and against someone who spent twenty years and millions of public fund to build the most famous mausoleum in the world, since men's sexual needs are held not only incontrollable but sacrosanct, with rape considered natural and of no consequence and in fact the woman's fault for being raped (why was she there, what did she were, did she not encourage it and want it and if so how does anyone prove it, what difference does it make unless it is a damage to her husband or father's honour) through most of the world even now when law is changing and some lip service to a woman's right to be not assaulted is paid at some places around the world.a b Ward, A. W., and Waller, A. R., eds. The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes. New York: Putnam, 1907–21 Frome, Susan (1 July 2006). "The Sage of Unbelief: George Eliot and Unorthodox Choices". The Humanist . Retrieved 11 November 2008.