#554
Title: Scenes of Clerical Life
Author: George Eliot
Publisher: Penguin
Year: 1857
431 pages
Eliot's first novel is actually three somewhat related novellas in pastoral settings and with more-or-less prominent clerics. While Eliot's promise is easy to see, this early attempt seems claustrophobic, perhaps due to its structure. The tone has the carefulness and inhibited language of many debuts, though her humor (and archness) often carry the day. The plots of the novellas are, in contrast, fairly overblown and unnecessarily dramatic. As a modern feminist reader I can't get behind Janet's forgiveness of her husband, which seems to reinscribe the woman's subservient role in the treacly way that Eliot typically reserves for offensively cute little children in subsequent novels. I am left with am impression of moral simplicity rather than the moral complexity I usually enjoy in her work. My overall impression is of wearing a corset laced just a little too tightly--I can't quite get a full, deep breath of Eliot.
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