The Norton Anthology of English literature. Volume 2

difficulties is something like this:�Take a woman's head, stuff it with a smat

tering of philosophy and literature chopped small, and with false notions of

society baked hard, let it hang over a desk a few hours every day, and serve up

hot in feeble English, when not required. You will rarely meet with a lady

novelist of the oracular class who is diffident of her ability to decide on the

ological questions,�who has any suspicion that she is not capable of discrim

inating with the nicest accuracy between the good and evil in all church

parties,�who does not see precisely how it is that men have gone wrong

hitherto,�and pity philosophers in general that they have not had the

opportunity of consulting her. Great writers, who have modestly contented

themselves with putting their experience into fiction, and have thought it quite

a sufficient task to exhibit men and things as they are, she sighs over as deplor

ably deficient in the application of their powers. "They have solved no great

questions"�and she is ready to remedy their omission by setting before you

a complete theory of life and manual of divinity, in a love story, where ladies

and gentlemen of good family go through genteel vicissitudes, to the utter

confusion of Deists, Puseyites,3 and ultra-Protestants, and to the perfect estab

lishment of that particular view of Christianity which either condenses itself

into a sentence of small caps, or explodes into a cluster of stars on the three

hundred and thirtieth page. It is true, the ladies and gentlemen will probably

seem to you remarkably little like any you have had the fortune or misfortune

to meet with, for, as a general rule, the ability of a lady novelist to describe

actual life and her fellow-men, is in inverse proportion to her confident elo

quence about God and the other world, and the means by which she usually

chooses to conduct you to true ideas of the invisible is a totally false picture

of the visible.

The epithet "silly" may seem impertinent, applied to a novel which indicates

so much reading and intellectual activity as "The Enigma;"4 but we use this

epithet advisedly. If, as the world has long agreed, a very great amount of

instruction will not make a wise man, still less will a very mediocre amount of

instruction make a wise woman. And the most mischievous form of feminine

silliness is the literary form, because it tends to confirm the popular prejudice

against the more solid education of women. When men see girls wasting their

time in consultations about bonnets and ball dresses, and in giggling or sen

timental love-confidences, or middle-aged women mismanaging their children,

and solacing themselves with acrid gossip, they can hardly help saying, "For

Heaven's sake, let girls be better educated; let them have some better objects

3. Protestants who believed in the importance of was completely beyond human experience. liturgical sacraments (following Edward Pusey, 4. The 1856 novel Eliot has just satirized in the 1800-1882). "Deists": Protestants who believed in preceding section. a personal God who created the universe but who

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1346 / GEORGE ELIOT

of thought�some more solid occupations." But after a few hours' conversation

with an oracular literary woman, or a few hours' reading of her books, they

are likely enough to say, "After all, when a woman gets some knowledge,

see what use she makes of it! Her knowledge remains acquisition, instead of

passing into culture; instead of being subdued into modesty and simplicity by a

larger acquaintance with thought and fact, she has a feverish consciousness of

her attainments; she keeps a sort of mental pocket-mirror, and is continually

looking in it at her own 'intellectuality;' she spoils the taste of one's muffin by

questions of metaphysics; 'puts down' men at a dinner table with her superior

information; and seizes the opportunity of a soiree to catechise us on the vital

question of the relation between mind and matter. And then, look at her writ

ings! She mistakes vagueness for depth, bombast for eloquence, and affecta

tion for originality; she struts on one page, rolls her eyes on another, grimaces

in a third, and is hysterical in a fourth. She may have read many writings of

great men, and a few writings of great women; but she is as unable to discern

the difference between her own style and theirs as a Yorkshireman is to discern

the difference between his own English and a Londoner's: rhodomontade'

is the native accent of her intellect. No�the average nature of women is too

shallow and feeble a soil to bear much tillage; it is only fit for the very lightest

crops." It is true that the men who come to such a decision on such very superficial

and imperfect observation may not be among the wisest in the world; but we

have not now to contest their opinion�we are only pointing out how it is

unconsciously encouraged by many women who have volunteered themselves

as representatives of the feminine intellect. We do not believe that a man was