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Howells' Use of George Eliot's Romola in April Hopes
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Abstract
Howells' many references to George Eliot s Tito Melema, beginning in 1864 and continuing up into the twentieth century, indicate that the character embodied insights on the nature of moral evil and the complexity of human personality which answered to Howells' intuitions on these subjects. Alice Pasmer's mistaken charge in Chapter xliii of April Hopes that her fiancé is, like Tito, “a faithless man” has the important function of revealing that her moral sensibility is seriously flawed. But Howells' is doing more with Alice than creating merely another Puritan dutiolator. It becomes apparent as Alice's selfishness is more fully revealed in the last third of the novel that it is her character which is glossed by comparison with Tito. At the end of the novel Alice is poised at the point where Tito began, and Howells', by marrying her to Dan, has created the conditions which will encourage the hardening of her selfishness into a predominant force in her character. Thus Howells' subtly indicates what direction her moral development will inevitably take.
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- Research Article
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- Copyright
- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1969
References
1 April Hopes (New York, 1888), p. 375. Page references in parentheses are to this edition.
I wish to acknowledge with thanks a fellowship awarded for 1966–67 by the Co-operative Program in the Humanities, administered jointly by Duke Univ. and the Univ. of North Carolina, which enabled me to complete this and other portions of a study of George Eliot's influence in America.
2 By 1880 the character of Tito was well on its way to becoming a classic literary type in America. Abba Gould Woolson could observe in 1886 that “literature holds no more striking instance of such development [of gradual moral decay] ... than the now famous character of Tito” (George Eliot and Her Heroines, New York, 1886, p. 7). For a full account of Tito's remarkable popularity in America see my dissertation, “George Eliot in America: Her Vogue and Influence, 1858–1900” (Univ. of North Carolina, 1965), Part ii, Ch. ii.
3 Although frequently praised in books surveying Howells' work and career, A pril H o pes has not been paid the tribute of close analysis. The most adequate criticisms are those of Edwin H. Cady, Olov W. Fryckstedt, and George Bennett. Cady's criticism in The Realist at War (Syracuse, N. Y., 1958), pp. 58–63, while the best of the three, does not sufficiently respond to Howells' efforts to differentiate Alice and Dan. In In Quest of America (Cambridge, Mass., 1958), pp. 221–223, Fryckstedt has an excellent analysis of Alice's psychology but does not develop an interpretation of the novel. Bennett's essay in his William Dean Howells': The Development of a Novelist (Norman, Okla., 1959), pp. 171–175, accepts uncritically the view that Howells' sees Alice and Dan as two egoists, each no better or no worse than the other. This essay hopes to show that Howells' made Alice and Dan psychologically and morally distinct and that an awareness of their difference in all its ramifications is necessary if we are to perceive his in ten tions.
4 New York, 1895, p. 218. Howells' made an attempt in 1864 to communicate to George Eliot how much he appreciated her novel. Fryckstedt cites an unpublished letter of 26 Jan. 1864 (MS at Harvard) in which Howells' is asking “M. D. Conway, who was in London, to tell Miss Evans how much he appreciated her portrayal of Italian character in Romola” (In Quest of America, p. 241).
5 xviii (Dec. 1866), 768.
6 Atlantic Monthly, xxii (Sept. 1868), 383.
7 In 1871, reviewing Von Julian Schmidt's Pictures of the Intellectual Life of Our Time, Howells' discussed Schmidt's lengthy essay on George Eliot (Atlantic Monthly, xxvii, April 1871, 525). Writing to his father in April 1873, he asked “have any of you at home been reading Middlemarchl We are now reading it aloud, with ever growing amazement at its greatness.... as an intellectual achievement, it is wonderful” (Life in Letters of William Dean Howells', ed. Mildred Howells', New York and London, 1928, i, 178). In 1874 Howells' reviewed George Eliot's The Legend of Jubal and Other Poems (Atlantic Monthly, xxxiv, July 1874, 103). Finally, in his essay “Henry James, Jr.,” in 1882, Howells' recognized George Eliot's role as an innovator when he stated that James belonged to a new school of fiction—the psychological—that “derives from Hawthorne and George Eliot rather than anv other” (The Century, xxv, Nov. 1882, 25).
8 Boston, 1885, p. 109. 9 Boston, 1887, p. 142.
10 The Minister's Charge, p. 294.
11 Harper's New Monthly Magazine, lxxiv (July 1887), 317.
12 New York, p. 17. Later in the novel Howells' mentions Tito as “a case of conscience in fiction” (p. 34). Howells' also discussed Tito in Heroines of Fiction (New York, 1901), ii, 62–63, and in his review of Leslie Stephen's George Eliot in Harper's New Monthly Magazine, cv (Nov. 1902), 964–965.
13 North American Review, clxxxix (June 1909), 815–816.
14 Romola, The Works of George Eliot, Illustrated Cabinet Edition (Boston, n.d.), i, 137. Page references to Romola in parentheses are to this edition.
15 See also March's description of Dryfoos' reaction to his son's death in A Hazard of New Fortunes: “I suppose I should have to say that we don't change at all. We develop. There's the making of several characters in each of us; we are each several characters, and sometimes this character has the lead in us, and sometimes that” (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1952, p. 540).
16 See, e.g., Miss Vane and Miss Carver in The Minister's Charge.
17 An Imperative Duty (New York, 1892), p. 132.
18 Howells' certainly intended Mrs. Mavering's physical incapacity to be symbolic of a crippled moral conscience. In discussing her infirmity Mrs. Mavering revealingly explains to Alice that “a great part of my life was made up of making life pleasant to others by fibbing. I stopped it when I came here” (p. 297); and Mr. Mavering, commenting upon his wife's judgment of Dan, tells his son that he wouldn't have him “fall under the condemnation of another's invalid judgment” (p. 424).
19 Harper's New Monthly Magazine, lxxiv (July 1887), 397.
20 The body of scholarship on the subject of George Eliot's influence on Howells' is surprisingly small. In the last two decades, which have seen a revival of interest in Howells' fiction, only Olov W. Fryckstedt has responded to Howells' assertions in My Literary Passions that George Eliot's mind “has from time to time profoundly influenced me by its ethics” and that “her influence continued through many years” (Ch. xxvi). Fryckstedt's discussion (In Quest of America, Chs. xiii-xv) is suggestive and points in the right direction, but it does not explore fully a subject that needs attention from Howells' scholars.
21 Feeling and Form (New York, 1953), p. 397.