Eliot scenes of clerical life study notes, Victorian Religious Experience

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1. Chapter I – what is your impression as the reader of the men discussing in the inn? Do you feel sympathy towards them? What seems to be the narrator’s attitude and how is it expressed?

2. How is Milby described in Chapter II? What is the role of religion and church-going in this town?

3. This is George Eliot’s first book, written before she was outed as a woman writer. What features does she give her narrator in order to create the illusion of the author’s masculinity? (See p. 133/chapter II)

4. Like in Middlemarch, Eliot presents the times long gone – Scenes started to be published in 1857, so we can assume that they take place somewhere in the early 1820s, the period of Eliot’s childhood. She is the daughter who “would read a selection of German poetry” (p. 133) and indeed much more. What is the narrator’s attitude to these times – fond? Nostalgic? Contemptuous?

5. Bible note: Korah, Dathan and Abiram were the leaders of Israelites rebelling against the leadership of Moses and Aaron (Numbers 16). Eliot quotes this as a common argument against Dissenters used by later generations of Anglican ministers, showing the growing intensity of the religious conflict.

6. Chapter I vs. Chapter III – the opponents of Mr Tryan seem to be mostly male, while his supporters are female – any idea why? (see p. 162)

7. How is Confirmation described in Chapter VI?

8. Evangelicals generally got bad press in English literature – think about Mr Brocklehurst and (presented more sympathetically) St John Rivers in Jane Eyre, Obadiah Slope in Barchester Towers or Mrs Clennam in Little Dorrit. How does Mr Tryan compare with these clergymen?

9. A striking image in chapter X (p. 230) comparing new moral ideas that Evangelicalism brings to Milby to a new step in the evolution of animals, although Scenes were written before the publication of On the Origin of Species. How can morality be compared with biology? Isn’t biology inherently amoral?

10. Chapter XI – when Mr Stickney “considered all voluntary discomfort as a sign of legal spirit” he refers to the belief that the man can earn salvation by good works. See a quote from Arthur W. Pink (a 20th c. Calvinist preacher) below:

What, then, does a preacher mean when he warns his hearers against a „legal spirit,” that is, when he employs the term properly, in a religious sense? He means that we must beware of looking within for something to commend ourselves unto God, to beware of trusting in any of our own performances to gain the Divine approbation, to beware of esteeming any of our works as meritorious or deserving of something good at the hands of the Most High. This is what the Pharisees did; this is what the deluded Papists do, thinking to earn God's favour by their good deeds and to be justified by Him on that ground. Nor is such senseless egotism by any means confined to Papists, though all are not so frank in openly affirming it, nay, many are not aware of such madness and self-conceit, for the heart is exceedingly deceptive and its workings often concealed from our consciousness.

11. Chapter XXII –

“balance of happiness” – refers to Utilitarian doctrine of judging actions by their giving “greatest happiness to the greatest number”, or, as Eliot writes ironically “that thirteen happy lives are a set-off against twelve miserable lives”

“doctrine of compensation”

The doctrine of compensation, in one form or another, was peculiarly dear to Transcendental optimism. Every action carries its reward or punishment with it. The thief is punished, though the police never find him, for the price of theft is loss of innocence, fear of arrest, suspicion of other men. (The Cambridge History of English and American Literature)

12. More or less useless language notes –

Atrabiliar – melancholy

Auricula – pierwiosnek łyszczak

Campanula – dzwonek

chapel of ease – a church building other than the main church in a parish.

Cistus – czystek

Guelder rose – kalina koralowa

Honeysuckle – wiciokrzew

Laburnum – złotokap

Mignonette – rezeda

Mountain ash - Jarzębina

Rechabite) (n.) One of the descendants of Jonadab, the son of Rechab, all of whom by his injunction abstained from the use of intoxicating drinks and even from planting the vine. Jer. xxxv. 2-19. Also, in modern times, a member of a certain society of abstainers from alcoholic liquors.

Scotch pebble - varieties of quartz

Snapdragon – lwia paszcza

Sweet William – goździk brodaty

Syringa – bez (what’s the difference between that and lilac? No idea)

Tatting – a kind of knotted lace, in Polish “frywolitki”

Wall-flower – lak pospolity

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Eliot scenes of clerical life study ...

Eliot scenes of clerical life study notes, Victorian Religious Experience

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