George Eliot and the Reform of England

you must look to yourself

Here is a video of a lady reciting the Nicene Creed in Old English, as translated by Ælfric. Excellent stuff.

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This is the third part of a short series of pieces about Middlemarch. As well as these essays, I have a podcast available with Clare Carlisle, who wrote a really wonderful biography of Eliot. And if there is enough interest, I will run a Zoom session for paid subscribers too.

The first piece traced the major themes of Middlemarch. The second piece was about the origins of these ideas—their roots in German theology and in Spinoza, whom Eliot translated. This piece is about the historical context for most of Eliot’s novels.

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England reformed

Most of George Eliot’s novels are concerned with England during the first era of Reform. She wrote in the 1850s, 60s, and 70s, but her novels are set in the 1790s-1830s. She was looking back to the pre-Victorian era when liberalism, Parliamentary reform, and nonconformist religion were growing. She wrote movingly about the effects of these changes on ordinary people—their suspicions of hand-looms, their dislike of train lines, the powerful effect that a heartfelt preacher can have on a community—and about the way a new humanism emerged in this changing society.

She was not, as we so often are, convinced that political reform would lead to personal reform. Instead, her novels are about the confluence of political, religious, and cultural ideas. She writes about the need for everyone to tend to their own soul.

She wrote about these changes because the same sort of changes were happening in her own time. The continued rise of geology and then Darwinian evolution undermined religion; the cause of poverty, law-reform, and later on the national outcry about drug dens in London (depicted in The Mystery of Edwin Drood); and finally the need for further Parliamentary reform, long-delayed since the first changes in 1832—, all this made mid-nineteenth-century Britain a place of great change and uncertainty.

Eliot looked back to the last generation’s upheavals to explain her own times. It is no small choice that she made Dorothea explicitly a Puritan—Eliot saw continuity with the changes that had been happening in England since the early sixteenth century.

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Liberal Toryism in the 1820s

The Industrial Revolution provided a lot of the impetus for these changes. Trade and commerce were more and more important, and this was unsettling the old idea that the landed class should rule the country. In the 1820s, Lord Liverpool’s Trade Secretary lowered tariffs, allowed non-British ships to import goods to Britain, allowed colonies to trade with other countries, and abolished many customs duties.

At the same time, Robert Peel reformed the law, removing the death penalty for dozens of petty offences, stopping the use of irons and manacles, and ensuring women prisoners had women gaolers. He also consolidated the law: ninety-two statutes about theft became five.

There were other issues as well, not all of them so reforming. The Anglican church had neglected pastoral care, leaving room for the spread of other forms of religion, especially Methodism. Although Ireland had become part of the United Kingdom in 1800, Catholics were still barred from holding office, and no reforms could be passed (known as “Catholic emancipation”) because the king opposed them.

Finally Liverpool’s “liberal Tory” government looked to the abolition of slavery. On this they had the support of the Whigs. But the planters had a strong lobby. What was needed was Parliamentary reform.

In 1827, Liverpool resigned. He died the following year. There was no-one else to carry on his work as a liberal Tory, following in the steps of Pitt the Younger.

Further reforms would create more division than unity. Parliamentary reform was never a very Tory cause (too many landowners), but it was something the Whigs supported.