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THE USE OF THE BIBLE IN GEORGE ELIOT'S FICTION

DISSERTATION

Presented to the Graduate Council of the

North Texas State University in Partial

Fulfillment of the Requirements

For the Degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

By

Jesse C. Jones, B. A., M. A.

Denton, Texas

May, 1975

Copyright by

Jesse C. Jones

1975
Jones, Jesse C., The Use of the Bible in Gem Eliot's Fiction. Doctor of Philosophy (English), May, 1975, 287 pp., bibliography, 143 titles. The purpose of this study is to demonstrate George Eliot's literary indebtedness to the Bible by isolating, identifying, and analyzing her various uses of Scripture in her novels. Chapter I is devoted to a statement of purpose and to an indication of overall organization. Chapter II traces George Eliot's acquisition of biblical knowledge through three stages: church attendance and familial influence during preschool years, the association with and influence of Evangelical teachers during the years of formal education, and finally the intense study of the Bible and related writings during the years following her schooling. Although her estimate of the Bible changed with the renunciation of Evangelical Christianity, George Eliot continued to read, revere, and draw upon the Bible throughout her career as a novelist. Chapter III demonstrates George Eliot's use of Bibles in Adam Bede and The Mill on the Floss for purposes of characteri- zation and symbolism. Characters who read the Bible provide both comic relief and serious thematic emphasis. In Chapters IV-VI, uses of biblical quotations, phrases, and allusions are analyzed. Quotations are few but effective: 1 2 they appear as epigraphs, serving as organic explications of the prefaced passages; they sharpen the characterization of such characters as Dinah Morris and Rufus Lyon; they occa- sionally provide humor. Biblical phrases serve basically the same purposes as quotations. They are used for epigraphs, for characterization, for authorial commentary, and for poetic effect. Numerous allusions are also used with ease and effectiveness to suit George Eliot's purpose of the moment and to enhance her fiction. Chapter VII identifies and analyzes symbols drawn from the Bible. From the Old Testament, there recur in Eliot's writings symbols of Eden, of the flood, of the wilderness and the promised land. From the New Testament, there appear symbols of temptation, of conversion, and--standing preeminent among George Eliot's biblical images--the cross. In Chapter VIII, George Eliot's use of the Bible in character delineation is divided into three facets: signi- ficant use of biblical names such as Adam, Hephzibah, and Esther; use of a specific biblical character or type, as with the prophets Savonarola and Mordecai and the Christ figure Daniel Deronda; and use of various biblical characters to create fictional characters, as with Tom and Maggie

Tulliver, Dinah Morris, and Adam Bede.

Chapter IX identifies the basic themes in George Eliot's fiction as the essentially biblical ones of duty, sowing and reaping, sympathy, renunciation, conversion, and suffering. 3 The biblical elements used to convey each theme are iden- tified and discussed. In addition to summarizing points made in previous chapters, Chapter X suggests that no significant change took place in Eliot's use of the Bible from first fictional work to last. Moreover, no particular portions of the Bible seem favored by Eliot over others. Rather, the fictional situ- ation and character dictate the type of biblical material used. George Eliot's grasp of the Bible was expert enough to allow use of the obscure facts and characters as well as the well known ones. The King James Bible pervades George Eliot's fiction, and is perhaps the most important single source from which she drew.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter

I. II. Page

INTRODUCTION ...............

GEORGE ELIOT'S KNOWLEDGE OF THE BIBLE ...

III. GEORGE ELIOT'S FICTIONAL USES OF

BIBLES AND BIBLE READERS .....

IV. BIBLICAL QUOTATIONS IN GEORGE

ELIOT'S NOVELS .......

V. GEORGE ELIOT'S USE OF BIBLICAL

PHRASEOLOGY .........

VI. BIBLICAL ALLUSIONS IN ELIOT'S FICTION

VII. BIBLICAL SYMBOLISM IN ELIOT'S FICTION

VIII. ELIOT'S USE OF THE BIBLE IN

CHARACTERIZATION .........

IX. GEORGE ELIOT'S THEMES AND THE BIBLE

X. CONCLUSION .............

BIBLIOGRAPHY ................*.

...0 1 10 31
....L4. ....68 ....93 ....142 .0 .. ..0 - 185
242
270
278
iii

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

There has been no greater single influence on English literature than the Bible. From Old English times to the present, from Beowulf and Bede to James Joyce and T. S. Eliot, the Bible has served as source for subject matter, theme, character, symbol, allusion, quotation, and phraseology in prose and poetry. As Henrietta

Tichy has observed,

Caedmon's

Biblical paraphrases

marked the first appearance of that golden thread of Scriptural in- fluence that was to brighten and enrich the whole tapestry of English literature. ...for the most part it has been one of the richest and most beautiful threads in the tapestry. ...

Among the most resplendent

segments of this tapestry is the Victorian period, a literary era in which the "golden thread of Scriptural influence" shines brightly.

The thread

is artistically interwoven into such variegated poems as Keble's The Christian Year, Browning's "An Epistle to Karshish,"

Swinburne's

"Hymn to Proserpine,"

Clough's "The Latest Deca-

logue," and Tennyson's

In Memoriam.

In Victorian

prose, such widely differing writers--both in ideas and in style--as Carlyle, Newman, Ruskin, and Arnold all draw on the Bible as 1 Biblical Influences in English Literature: A Survey of

Studies (Ann Arbor: Edwards Brothers,T1953),

p. iii. 1 2 an important source.

Arnold,

for instance, demonstrates his reliance upon biblical phraseology when he writes, "It looked in Byron's glass as it looks in Lord Beaconsfield's, and sees, or fancies that it sees, its own face there; and then it goes its way and straightway forgets what manner of man it saw.

And Ruskin,

in Fors Clavigera, explicitly acknowledges his involuntary indebtedness to the Bible:

Walter

Scott and Pope's

Homer were reading

of my own election, but my mother forced me, by steady daily toil, to learn long chapters of the Bible by heart, as well as to read it every syllable through, aloud, hard names and all, from Genesis to the Apocalypse, about once a year; and to that discipline--patient, accurate, and resolute--I owe not only a knowledge of the book, which I find occasionally serviceable, but much of my general power of taking pains, and the best part of my taste in literature.

From Walter Scott's novels I might

easily, as I grew older, have fallen to other people's novels; and Pope might, perhaps, have led me to take

Johnson's

English,

or Gibbon's, as types of language; but, once knowing the 32nd of Deuteronomy, the 119th

Psalm,

the 15th of 1st Corinthians, the Sermon on the

Mount, and most of the Apocalypse,

every syllable by heart, and having always a way of thinking with myself what words meant, it was not possible for me, even in the foolishest times of youth, to write entirely super- ficial or formal

English.

...3

What is true of Victorian

poets and nonfiction prose writers is true as well of Victorian novelists.

The fabric

2Matthew

Arnold,

"Byron," in Poetry and Criticism of

Matthew Arnold, ed. A. Dwight Culler (Boston:

Houghton

Mifflin

1961),

p. 361. Compare

James 1:23-214

, King James

Version:

"For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass. for he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was. 3 John Ruskin, Fors Clavigera, Letters 1-36, Vol. XXVII of The Complete

Works of John Ruskin,

ed. E. T. Cook and

Alexander

Wedderburn,

39 vole. (London:

George Allen, 1907),

pp.

167-168.

3 of their fictional creations is similarly interlaced with this biblical thread. The Bible serves as an influence upon such diverse character creations as Charlotte

Bronte's

St. John Rivers and Thomas Hardy's Bathsheba Everdene; such sym- bolic acts as Rochester's conversion by fire in J En and little Tom's regeneration by water in The Water Babies; such mottoes as Hardy's "The letter killeth" 5 in Jude the Obscure; and such scenes as the death of Sydney Carton in Dickens' A

Tale of Two Cities:

"I am the Resurrection and the Life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.

The murmuring

of many voices, the upturning of many faces, the pressing on of many footsteps in the outskirts of the crowd, so that it swells forward in a mass, like one great heave of water, all flashes away. Twenty- three.

They said of him, about the city that night, that

it was the peacefullest man's face ever beheld there.

Many added that he looked

sublime and prophetic.

Virtually

all major Victorian novelists drew from the Bible to some degree. Perhaps none knew it more thoroughly

For a discussion

of such baptismal symbolism and its frequency in Victorian literature, see Jerome Hamilton

Buckley,

The Victorian

Temper: A Stud in Literar Culture (Cambridge:

Harvard Univ. Pre,

T e1969PJ,

Chapter

,"The attern of Con- vers ion."t

5The motto is a partial quotation

of II Cor. 3:6--"Who also hath made us able ministers of the new testament;; not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life." 6

Charles Dickens,

A Tale of Two Cities, Vol. XXI of The

Works of Charles Dickens, GadshillEdition,

34 vols. (New

York Charles Scribner's

Sons, 1899), p. 436.

4 or used it more frequently, however, than did George

Eliot.

Her Evangelical

adolescence produced a lasting reverence for it. Her early omnivorous reading was dominated by thequotesdbs_dbs20.pdfusesText_26