eality in George Eliot’s Understanding of Novel As a woman writer in a time when women’s presence in literature was just beginning to be acknowledged with the rise of novel, George Eliot was already among the best novelists of the time, women and men alike. While being among best novelists can be a subjective matter, perhaps it is safer to say that she was among the best realists. This feature alone has attracted attention from the male writers of her time around the world, so it is actually quite in place that her perspective on the women writers at the time is the most credible. In “Silly Novels by Lady Novelists”, Eliot’s main argument is that people wrongly accuse women of wasting their educations with silly novels. The problem is that
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To describe those silly novels, which she calls “mind and millinery” (1361) novels, she first lists a serious features the characters have, and then goes on to classify those novels in three species. All the features she lists are what the women of the time would think ideal, but for exactly that reason, Eliot finds them silly. When she is done with the general aspects of such novels, she elaborates more on why idealism is more favoured among women. Her most significant point is that the accused party is not just women, but ladies. While the society may have been pardoning all the faults of women’s novels due to their motives, which are simply making bread, she argues that …show more content…
There is more sympathy to be found in “monotonous homely existence” (2) and that existence has been experienced by more people than those who experience “a life of pomp or of absolute indigence”. While she calls this reality a monotonous one, she also compares it to a river, for when the ideal appearance loses its significance, so does ideal feelings, and real human feelings “do not wait for beauty”, but “brings beauty with it” wherever it goes (2). This ever-changing situation of real human beings also provides an endless source of true
To describe those silly novels, which she calls “mind and millinery” (1361) novels, she first lists a serious features the characters have, and then goes on to classify those novels in three species. All the features she lists are what the women of the time would think ideal, but for exactly that reason, Eliot finds them silly. When she is done with the general aspects of such novels, she elaborates more on why idealism is more favoured among women. Her most significant point is that the accused party is not just women, but ladies. While the society may have been pardoning all the faults of women’s novels due to their motives, which are simply making bread, she argues that …show more content…
There is more sympathy to be found in “monotonous homely existence” (2) and that existence has been experienced by more people than those who experience “a life of pomp or of absolute indigence”. While she calls this reality a monotonous one, she also compares it to a river, for when the ideal appearance loses its significance, so does ideal feelings, and real human feelings “do not wait for beauty”, but “brings beauty with it” wherever it goes (2). This ever-changing situation of real human beings also provides an endless source of true