1 - Vague Dreams: Realism and the Drama of Details

Summary

‘September 1856 made a new era in my life,’ declared Eliot, ‘for it was then I began to write Fiction’ (L. ii. 406). In her journal entry of December 1857, she records how, gently encouraged by Lewes, she eventually drew out of the shadowy vagueness of her dreams her first piece of fiction, ‘The Sad Fortunes of Amos Barton’, the first of the three Scenes of Clerical Life. She continues:

It had always been a vague dream of mine that some time or other I might write a novel, and my shadowy conception of what the novel was to be, varied, of course, from one epoch of my life to another…. I always thought I was deficient of dramatic power, both of construction and dialogue, but I felt I should be at my ease in the descriptive parts of a novel. My ‘introductory chapter’ was pure description though there were good materials in it for dramatic presentation. It happened to be among the papers I had with me in Germany and one evening at Berlin, something led me to read it to George. He was struck with it as a bit of concrete description, and it suggested to him the possibility of my being able to write a novel, though he distrusted – indeed disbelieved in, my possession of any dramatic power. Still, he began to think that I might as well try… . (L. ii. 406–7)

Striking in this description of her entrée to novel-writing is the emphasis that she places on description itself. ‘Concrete description’ came easily to her, more difficult to achieve was ‘drama’. Lewes ‘disbelieved in [her] possession of any dramatic power’, but, he told her, ‘You have wit, description, and philosophy – those go a good way towards the production of a novel. It is worthwhile for you to try the experiment’ (L. ii. 407). The challenge for Eliot was to put the details drawn from her punctilious observations of life into a dramatic framework. In the end she was successful. Having settled upon a title and theme for her story – ‘sketches drawn from my own observation of the Clergy’ – she finally wrote a story so affecting, she later relates, that both Lewes and she ‘cried over it’ (L. ii. 408).