While
I agree with my classmates in their discussions some of the particularities
behind Felix Holt’s ineffectiveness, I also think it is helpful to note the
likelihood that Felix’s limitations speak to George Eliot’s pragmatism and
perhaps humility as a writer; in this blog post I want to look at why Felix is
ineffective, rather than how. Particularly, I feel that there is a connection
between Felix’s positioning as an “ineffectual protagonist” and Eliot’s own
acknowledgement of the limited powers of novelists, or individuals in general,
to solve vast societal problems. In 1856, Eliot composed an essay entitled
“Silly Novels by Lady Novelists,” in which she mocks the droves of female-authored texts
(those of “the oracular species”)
that set out to resolve “the knottiest moral and speculative questions” (87).
With Eliot’s essay in mind, having Felix as a perpetually or at least
eventually successful protagonist would be troublesome for a couple of reasons.
First, Felix’s perfection would be too convenient, and thus artistically
suspect, an issue that Eliot points to by describing a too neatly drawn
narrative in her before mentioned essay: “The vicious baronet is sure to be
killed in a duel, and the tedious husband dies in his bed requesting his wife,
as a particular favour to him, to marry the man she loves best, and having
already dispatched a note to the lover informing him of the comfortable
arrangement" (86). Similarly, if Felix prohibits the men from performing
violent acts during the riot (and does not kill poor Tucker himself), if he
brilliantly argues for himself during the court scene and thus makes clear his
innocence, and if he converts the men to his way of thinking on education and
politics, then the verisimilitude of the text is depleted—all of the pieces
would have fallen together too cleanly and with too heavy-handed an effort on
the part of the novelist. Relatedly, we see in Felix Holt Eliot’s hesitancy to present solutions to systemic
problems within the easily manipulated form of the novel, a restraint that
other authors did not always place before themselves: “‘They [male authors who
have written only about their own experiences] have solved no great
questions’—and she [the lady novelist] is ready to remedy their omission by
setting before you a complete theory of life and manual of divinity, in a love
story” (88). Felix can marry Esther (and even convert her to his way of
thinking), but to have his radical philosophies universally acknowledged and
for him to offer salvation to the working class through his words and acts
would make him a mythic figure rather than a man. Just as she undermines
Felix’s ability and humanizes him in the process, Eliot refuses to play the function
of oracle through her novel, rather limiting herself to the more prosaic role
of writer.
Works Cited
Eliot, George. “Silly Novels by Lady
Novelists.” Feminist Theory and Literary
Criticism. Ed. Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar. New York: Norton, 2007.
85-92. Print.
Valerie,
ReplyDeleteI think you make a really good point about Felix’s ineffectiveness being linked to verisimilitude and to Eliot’s acknowledged limitations regarding the powers of novelists. If one way we consider Felix as a stand-in for novelists, his inability to sway anyone with the power to make change (i.e. voting men) is particularly detrimental to the idea that novelists can enact wide spread social change. Instead, as you pointed out, he only manages to convert Esther, and even that conversion has several other factors at play including love. Had Esther not loved Felix, I find it doubtful she’d have turned Harold Transome down meaning that her ideals might be altered, but her actions would not have altered.
Really interesting connection to "Silly Novels" and to Eliot's aesthetic as well as political commitments. Eliot's belief in the power of fiction to affect its readers emotionally and ethically fits well with Felix's personal influence on Esther (though I agree with Deirdre -- Felix is lucky Esther falls for him because otherwise he'd have no converts, though of course she falls for him because of his powerful influence).
ReplyDelete