Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gvvz8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T07:16:57.224Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

SPENCERIAN EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY IN DANIEL DERONDA

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 February 2015

Lauren Cameron
Lauren Cameron*
Affiliation:
University of Iowa
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

George Eliot, notoriously sensitive to criticism of her novels, received a reassuring letter from her publisher, John Blackwood, one month into the publication of Daniel Deronda (1876) in Books or Parts:

Critics both public and private amuse me by their complaint that they do not quite understand Gwendolen. Did they wish you to lay down a chart of her character and fate on the first page? Did they ever fully know any human being at a first meeting or even after years of acquaintance? The objection is in reality the highest compliment, believing in fact the plainest confession of the interest excited. (GEL 6: 232)

While Blackwood was certainly trying to flatter and calm an anxious, important client, this letter also highlights a central element of Eliot's final completed novel: the depth, development, and realism of its psychological portraiture. What made the psychology of Gwendolen Harleth especially, but the eponymous Daniel Deronda as well, resonate with discerning readers from that time to this? This essay argues that it is the same cause that frustrates many readers: Eliot's engagement with the most famous and scientifically integrated psychological theory of her time – Herbert Spencer’s.

Type
Research Article
Information
Victorian Literature and Culture , Volume 43 , Issue 1 , March 2015 , pp. 63 - 81
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

WORKS CITED

Abel, Betty. “Herbert Spencer and the Social Science.” Contemporary Review 240.1396 (1982): 259–66.Google Scholar
Andreski, Stanislav. “Introductory Essay: Sociology, Biology and Philosophy in Herbert Spencer.” Herbert Spencer: Structure, Function and Evolution. London: Michael Joseph, 1971. 7–34.Google Scholar
Anger, Suzy. Victorian Interpretation. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2005.Google Scholar
Arnold, Matthew. Culture and Anarchy. 1867–68. New York: Cambridge UP, 2011.Google Scholar
Beer, Gillian. Darwin's Plots: Evolutionary Narrative in Darwin, George Eliot and Nineteenth-Century Fiction. 2nd ed.Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berkove, Lawrence I. “Before Adam and The Scarlet Plague: Two Novels of Evolution by Jack London.” The American Literary Naturalism Newsletter 2.1 (2007): 13–16.Google Scholar
Berkove, Lawrence I.. “Jack London and Evolution: From Spencer to Huxley.” American Literary Realism 36.3 (2004): 243–55.Google Scholar
Bowler, Peter. “The Changing Meaning of ‘Evolution.’” Journal of the History of Ideas 36.1 (1975): 95–114.Google Scholar
Bowler, Peter. The Non-Darwinian Revolution: Reinterpreting a Historical Myth. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins UP, 1988.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carneiro, Robert L. Introduction to The Evolution of Society: Selections from Herbert Spencer's Principles of Sociology. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1967. v-lvii.Google Scholar
Chilton, Mark. “‘A Change in Scale’: Darwin, Huxley, Spencer and the Evolution of an Idea in The Food of the Gods.” Undying Fire 3 (2004): 3–28.Google Scholar
Clodd, Edward. Pioneers of Evolution, from Thales to Huxley. London: Cassell, 1907.Google Scholar
Colson, Dan. “Anarchism and the Brute: Frank Norris, Herbert Spencer, and Anti-Government Atavism.” Studies in American Naturalism 6.1 (2011): 25–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Denton, George B. “Herbert Spencer and the Rhetoricians.” PMLA 34.1 (1919): 89–111.Google Scholar
Depew, David J. “The Rhetoric of the Origin of Species.” The Cambridge Companion to the “Origin of Species.” Ed. Ruse, Michael and Richards, Robert J.. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2009. 237–55.Google Scholar
Dixon, Thomas. “Herbert Spencer and Altruism: The Sternness and Kindness of a Victorian Moralist.” Herbert Spencer: The Intellectual Legacy. Ed. Jones, Greta and Peel, Robert A.. London: Galton Institute, 2004. 85–124.Google Scholar
Dixon, Thomas. The Invention of Altruism: Making Moral Meanings in Victorian Britain. Oxford: British Academy, 2008.Google Scholar
Eliot, George. Daniel Deronda. 1876. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1981.Google Scholar
Francis, Mark. Herbert Spencer and the Invention of Modern Life. Stocksfield: Acumen, 2007.Google Scholar
Gagnier, Regina. “The Law of Progress and the Ironies of Individualism in the Nineteenth Century.” New Literary History 31.2 (2000): 315–36.Google Scholar
Garratt, Peter. Victorian Empiricism: Self, Knowledge, and Reality in Ruskin, Bain, Lewes, Spencer, and George Eliot. Madison: Farleigh Dickinson UP, 2010.Google Scholar
Gettelman, Debra. “Reading Ahead in George Eliot.” Novel 39.1 (2005): 25–47.Google Scholar
Graber, Robert Bates. “Herbert Spencer and George Eliot: Some Corrections and Implications.” George Eliot-George Henry Lewes Studies 22–23 (1993): 69–83.Google Scholar
Haight, Gordon S.George Eliot: A Biography. New York: Oxford UP, 1968.Google Scholar
Haight, Gordon S.. ed. The George Eliot Letters. 9 vols. New Haven: Yale UP, 1954–78.Google Scholar
Handley, Graham. Introduction. Daniel Deronda by Eliot, George. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1981. ix–xii.Google Scholar
Hands, Timothy. “‘A Bewildered Child and His Conjurors’: Hardy and the Ideas of His Time.” New Perspectives on Thomas Hardy. Ed. Pettit, Charles P. C.. New York: St. Martin's, 1994. 137–55.Google Scholar
Harris, Margaret, and Johnston, Judith, eds. The Journals of George Eliot. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998.Google Scholar
Henry, Nancy. The Life of George Eliot: A Critical Biography. Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012.Google Scholar
Herzog, Annabel. “Tale of Two Secrets. A Rereading of Daniel Deronda.” differences 16.2 (2005): 37–60.Google Scholar
Jones, Greta. “Spencer and His Circle.” Herbert Spencer: The Intellectual Legacy. Ed. Jones, Greta and Peel, Robert A.. London: Galton Institute, 2004. 1–17.Google Scholar
Jordanova, Ludmilla. Lamarck. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1984.Google Scholar
Karl, Frederick R.George Eliot: Voice of a Century. New York: Norton, 1995.Google Scholar
Levine, George. Darwin and the Novelists: Patterns of Science in Victorian Fiction. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1988.Google Scholar
Macpherson, Hector. Spencer and Spencerism. New York: Doubleday, Page, 1900.Google Scholar
Matus, Jill L. “Historicizing Trauma: The Genealogy of Psychic Shock in Daniel Deronda.” Victorian Literature and Culture 36.1 (2008): 59–78.Google Scholar
Mingardi, Alberto. Herbert Spencer: Major Conservative and Libertarian Thinkers Series. Ed. Meadowcroft, John. New York: Continuum, 2011.Google Scholar
Moore, Gregory. “Nietzsche, Spencer, and the Ethics of Evolution.” Journal of Nietzsche Studies 23 (2002): 1–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Noble, Mary. “Darwin among the Novelists: Narrative Strategy and the Expression of the Emotions.” Nineteenth-Century Prose 38.1 (2011): 99–126.Google Scholar
Paxton, Nancy L.George Eliot and Herbert Spencer: Feminism, Evolutionism, and the Reconstruction of Gender. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1991.Google Scholar
Peel, J. D. Y.Introduction. Herbert Spencer on Social Evolution. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1972. vii–li.Google Scholar
Penner, Louise. “‘Unmapped Country’: Uncovering Hidden Wounds in Daniel Deronda.” Victorian Literature and Culture 30.1 (2002): 77–97.Google Scholar
Perry, R. B.The Thought and Character of William James. 2 vols. Boston: Little, Brown, 1935.Google Scholar
Postlethwaite, Diana. “George Eliot and Science.” The Cambridge Companion to George Eliot. Ed. Levine, George. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2001. 98–118.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Postlethwaite, Diana. Making It Whole: A Victorian Circle and the Shape of Their World. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1984.Google Scholar
Reimer, Margaret Loewen. “The Spoiled Child: What Happened to Gwendolen Harleth?” Cambridge Quarterly 36.1 (2007): 33–50.Google Scholar
Richards, Robert J.Darwin and the Emergence of Evolutionary Theories of Mind and Behavior. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1987.Google Scholar
Richards, Robert J.. “The Relation of Spencer's Evolutionary Theory to Darwin's.” Herbert Spencer: The Intellectual Legacy. Ed. Jones, Greta and Peel, Robert A.. London: Galton Institute, 2004. 17–36.Google Scholar
Richardson, Angelique. “Darwin and Reductionisms: Victorian, Neo-Darwinian and Postgenomic Biologies.” 19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century 11 (2010), np. Web. 25 Aug. 2012.Google Scholar
Rosenthal, Jesse. “The Large Novel and the Law of Large Numbers; or, Why George Eliot Hates Gambling.” ELH 77 (2010): 777–811.Google Scholar
Rylance, Rick. Victorian Psychology and British Culture, 1850–1880. New York: Oxford UP, 2000.Google Scholar
Shuttleworth, Sally. George Eliot and Nineteenth-Century Science: The Make-Believe of a Beginning. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1984.Google Scholar
Shuttleworth, Sally. “The Language of Science and Psychology in George Eliot's Daniel Deronda.” Victorian Science and Victorian Values: Literary Perspectives. New York: New York Academy of Sciences, 1981. 269–318.Google Scholar
Spencer, Herbert. An Autobiography. 2 vols. New York: D. Appleton, 1904.Google Scholar
Spencer, Herbert. “The Development Hypothesis.” Essays: Scientific, Political, and Speculative. Vol. 1. London: Williams and Norgate, 1868. 377–83.Google Scholar
Spencer, Herbert. First Principles (1862). New York: De Witt Revolving Fund, 1958.Google Scholar
Spencer, Herbert. The Principles of Psychology. London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1855.Google Scholar
Spencer, Herbert. “Progress: Its Law and Cause.” Essays: Scientific, Political, and Speculative. Vol. 1. London: Williams and Norgate, 1868. 1–60.Google Scholar
Straley, Jessica. “Of Beasts and Boys: Kingsley, Spencer, and the Theory of Recapitulation.” Victorian Studies 49.4 (2007): 583–609.Google Scholar
Taylor, Michael, ed. Introduction. Herbert Spencer and the Limits of the State: The Late Nineteenth-Century Debate between Individualism and Collectivism. Bristol: Thoemmes, 1996.Google Scholar
Taylor, Michael. The Philosophy of Herbert Spencer. New York: Continuum, 2007.Google Scholar
Werth, Barry. Banquet at Delmonico's: Great Minds, the Gilded Age, and the Triumph of Evolution in America. New York: Random House, 2009.Google Scholar
Willburn, Sarah. “Possessed Individualism in George Eliot's Daniel Deronda.” Victorian Literature and Culture 34 (2006): 271–89.Google Scholar
Wilt, Judith. “‘He would come back’: The Fathers of Daughters in Daniel Deronda.” Nineteenth-Century Literature 42 (1987): 313–38.Google Scholar
Zappen, James P. “Scientific Rhetoric in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries: Herbert Spencer, Thomas H. Huxley, and John Dewey.” Textual Dynamics of the Professions: Historical and Contemporary Studies of Writing in Professional Communities. Ed. Bazerman, Charles and Paradis, James. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1991. 145–67.Google Scholar