Scenes of Clerical Life
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| Scenes of Clerical Life | |
 Frontispiece of 1906 MacMillan edition of Scenes of Clerical Life drawn by Hugh Thomson |
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| Author | George Eliot |
|---|---|
| Illustrator | Hugh Thomson |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Short story compilation |
| Publisher | William Blackwood & Sons |
| Publication date | 1857 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| ISBN | NA |
| Followed by | Adam Bede |
Scenes of Clerical Life is a collection of George Eliot's first writings in fiction. The book contains three stories each set in the small town of Milby in the English Midlands. The time-frame for the stories was about 30 years prior to their first publication in Blackwood's Magazine in 1857. Each of the stories examines an aspect of religious reform and the impacts that change and differing beliefs have on the residents of Milby.[1]
Contents |
[edit] Plot summary
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[edit] "The Sad Fortunes of the Reverend Amos Barton"
The first story in Scenes of Clerical Life is titled "The Sad Fortunes of the Reverend Amos Barton". It is a story about Barton who is the new pastor of the local church in Shepperton. Being a pious man Barton will do just about anything to serve his congregation and especially his wife, Milly. Since Barton is new, and not all of the congregation accept him, he feels that it is especially important to serve the community. Barton's charity is strained when he meets Countess Czerlaski, who is beautiful and in need of a home. Barton and his wife accept Czerlaski, until Milly becomes ill and the nanny convinces Czerlaski to leave. Milly dies of her illness and Barton is plunged into sadness at the loss. Just as Barton reconciles himself to Milly's death, he get more bad news: the vicar in the region, Mr. Carpe, wanted to be the pastor of the church in Shepperton, so Barton was given six-months notice to leave. Barton accepted the transfer but was disheartened because he had improved the church and had won the sympathies of the parishioners. Barton believed that the transfer was unfair because the vicar's brother-in-law was in search of a new parish in which to work. The story concludes twenty years later with Barton at his wife's grave with one of his daughters: Patty. Barton laments how things have changed, and that he is especially proud of his son Richard.[2]
[edit] "Mr. Gilfil's Love Story"
The second work in Scenes of Clerical Life is titled "Mr. Gilfil's Love-Story" is about the Life of a clergyman named Maynard Gilfil who died 30-years before the story began. The setting is the same parish of Shepperton as the other works in the trilogy and the plot begins as Gilfil falls in Love with a talented singer, Caterina Sarti, Gilfil and Sarti met as adolescents but did not applicate Gilfil's overtures. His love for her was not recognized because she desires the carefree Captain Anthony Wybrow, who only teases Sarti with flirtation. Wybrow's uncle plans that Wybrow will marry a wealthy friend of his anyway named Miss Assher. Both Sarti and Assher end up living together with Wybrow. When Wybrow dies, Sarti becomes terribly distraut. Gilfil seeks her out and helps her recover and marries her. Unfortunately, her spirit is so broken that she dies soon afterwards, leaving the pastor to die a lonely man.[3][4]
[edit] "Janet's Repentance"
Scenes of Clerical Life concludes with Janet's Repentance, a story about Janet Demptster and her brutish, bully, lawyer-husband, Robert Dempster. Janet's sad domestic life is rescued by a previously dismissed preacher named Edgar Tyran who guides Janet toward redemption and self-sufficiency.[5]
[edit] Criticism
Scenes of Clerical Life was met with critical acclaim. In 1858 Charles Dickens wrote the following to Elliot to express his approval of the book. The letter is also noteworthy because Dickens was the first to suggest that because of the emotional appeal of the characters in Scenes of Clerical Life it was written by a female.[6]
I have been so strongly affected by the two first tales in the book you have had the kindness to send me, through Messrs. Blackwood, that I hope you will excuse my writing to you to express my admiration of their extraordinary merit. The exquisite truth and delicacy both of the humor and the pathos of these stories, I have never seen the like of; and they have impressed me in a manner that I should find it very difficult to describe to you. if I had the impertinence to try. In addressing these few words of thankfulness to the creator of the Sad Fortunes of the Rev. Amos Barton, and the sad love-story of Mr. Gilfil, I am (I presume) bound to adopt the name that it pleases that excellent writer to assume. I can suggest no better one: but I should have been strongly disposed, if I had been left to my own devices, to address the said writer as a woman. I have observed what seemed to me such womanly touches in those moving fictions, that the assurance on the title-page is insufficient to satisfy me even now. If they originated with no woman, I believe that no man ever before had the art of making himself mentally so like a woman since the world began.[7]
[edit] References
- ^ Eliot, George, and Jennifer Gribble. Scenes of Clerical Life. New York: Penguin, 1985.[1]
- ^ Scenes from Clerical Life
- ^ George Eliot: Review of Scenes of Clerical Life - Warwickshire Web
- ^ Scenes of Clerical Life Book Review
- ^ Scenes from Clerical Life
- ^ Crompton, Margaret. George Eliot, the Woman. New York: T. Yoseloff, 1960. Page 17.[2]
- ^ Moulton, Charles Wells. The Library of Literary Criticism of English and American Authors. Buffalo New York: Moulton, 1904. vol. 7, page. 181.[3]
[edit] External links
- Scenes of Clerical Life – searchable online e-text posted by Peter Batke at Princeton University
- Scenes of Clerical Life, Estes and Lauriat, 1894. Scanned illustrated book via Google Books
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