The Two Faces of the Ideal Woman—George Eliot’s Essay

George Eliot’s essay on the writers Margaret Fuller and Mary Wollstonecraft (published in 1855) may at first appear, in the context of today’s generation, to be a critical piece that is controversially conservative in tone. This initial feeling that readers may have, concerning how Eliot doesn’t really deal with the fact that women were being mistreated by men in terms of their having little to no say in any matter and lack of freedom, is merely the initial reaction that is purposeful on the writer’s part. Eliot (whose real name was Marion Evans; she wrote under a male pseudonym) was very conscious of making her essay on two controversial Feminist writers of that time period appear to be merely harmless.

Upon first reading, especially if the reader reads the piece today, there is almost a tone of accordance on the writer’s part directed towards the male audience; it doesn’t appear as if Eliot is confiding towards her own sex. Rather, upon first reading, the piece is almost offensive in how it’s more of an assent rather than an appeal towards the male sex for the betterment of the state of womanhood. Eliot purposefully wrote a subtle piece all in order so that the state of womanhood could be improved upon. After all, if Eliot stated in her essay what she really wanted, that women should not be mistreated by the male sex anymore in the form of not letting their voices be heard, then her request especially in the context of those times would be too obvious and nothing would be done as a result. Instead, Eliot uses a reasoning technique with men throughout the essay. Eliot is basically stating to the male audience reading her piece that if women get what they ultimately want, which is simply just a much more adequate education, then males will be more content in the process. Eliot was trying to be more effective towards her cause than her more abrasive Feminist counterparts; she wasn’t cautious just for the sake of being cautious. Rather, the essay is a subtle work that was ultimately meant to deceive men in power to believe in womanhood’s cause; to make males in authority who governed the land believe that they were bettering the state of their sex rather than the opposite sex. In reality, these males had no idea what they were consenting to.

In Eliot’s estimation, it was important for women to never, “…undervalue the smallest offices of domestic care or kindliness.” This may appear, especially to a reader reading this piece now, that Eliot was not trying to advance women’s roles in society, but rather liked women to be idle and content with their position. However, this assumption is very far from the truth. After all, Eliot excerpts the statement made by Margaret Fuller; that, “Women have been allowed to remain in ignorance and slavish dependence many, very many years, and still we hear of nothing but their fondness of pleasure and sway, their preference of rakes and soldiers, their childish attachment to toys, and the vanity that makes them value accomplishments more than virtues.” If anything, Eliot, speaking through Fuller’s words, never respected an idle woman.

Many considerations have to be made by a reader reading this piece today. As mentioned before, men were the only sex who had any say and authority in society. Consequently, a female writer had to be very cautious in order to state any of her opinions, much less ones that promulgated the growth of status for the female sex. Many have stated that an indication of Eliot being cautious in her essay is whenever she quotes from another writer, as if she were too fearful to state her own opinion. However, maybe she just preferred the phraseology from a Tennyson or a Fuller or a Wollstonecraft? Why would she have to rephrase an idea expressed so well in the past? Besides, if a writer quotes other writers then her cause appears much greater, almost as if a whole society were ready to pounce upon the male sexists in the world.

Eliot was much too great a writer to be cautious. Her writing, particularly here, is subtle for a purpose that is twofold. This double sided nature of her argument is present because Eliot was writing to both sexes. One of the criticisms that is addressed towards this essay is that Eliot was only writing to the male sex, because they are the only ones who had any power and they are the only ones that could have altered society in anyway; the criticism is that Eliot felt that women shouldn’t be written to because they were helpless. If a reader reads this piece more than once, they can obviously see that this is not simply the case. Eliot is writing to her sex when she states that, “In both writers we discern, under the brave bearing of a strong and truthful nature, the beating of a loving woman’s heart, which teaches them not to undervalue the smallest offices of domestic care or kindliness.” Eliot was recommending to her sex that they should respect their jobs that they had at the moment for several reasons, one being that they would have had their job positions for awhile; Eliot was a realist and she realized that women should be patient because they were not going to receive freedom from oppression right away. Also, if women appear content with their position then men will not feel threatened by their sex and will start to give in, and consequently give women more and more power. This is no more apparent than when Eliot states that:

“The Libertinism, and even the virtues of superior men, will always give women of some description great power over them; and these weak women, under the influence of childish passions of selfish vanity, will throw a false light over the objects which the very men view with their eyes who ought to enlighten their judgment. Men of fancy, and those sanguine characters who mostly hold the helm of human affairs in general, relax in the society of women; and surely I need not cite to the most superficial reader of history the numerous examples of vice and oppression which the private intrigues of female favorites have produced; not to dwell on the mischief that naturally arises from the blundering interposition of well-meaning folly.”

This theory of George Eliot’s is an example of how the writer really thinks. Even though she was cautious for a purpose (which will be alluded to later in the paper), she also did have very strong beliefs distinct from the rest of the feminists of the period. She did truly believe that women were at a disadvantage if they just started rebelling against the system, because the male dominated society had precluded their general education as a sex. Therefore, women in Eliot’s estimation really wouldn’t be ready to combat the male sex. It wasn’t that she was against putting men “off guard”, but rather that she felt the only way to put them off guard was to learn as much as possible before combating them. That’s why she believed so much in educating women, opposed to appealing to men to give women other roles in the job market.

That one request (which is in the essay)is more than enough considering that it opens up the floodgates for women to enhance and grow their position. Also, once someone consents (in this case the male sex) then it will be much easier to consent the next time over a different issue. This is perfectly stated in the dictionary section on George Eliot entitled the Woman Question. In it, John Rignall writes that, “Without putting herself in opposition to her Feminist friends, she kept her distance from their political ardour, pondering the question slowly and placing it in contexts developed in her own writing.” This is no more apparent than when Eliot states in her essay that, “For the transactions of business it is much better to have to deal with a knave than a fool, because a knave adheres to some plan, and any plan of reason may be seen through sooner than a sudden flight of folly.” Throughout the essay, Eliot is almost movingly confiding to her other sisters to wait until one matter is dealt with at a time. Her statement to the female sex was that you can’t attack every issue at once.

The other side of the argument, the supposed assent to men, is a method on Eliot’s part that is very clever considering that there is more than meets the eye here. Many readers criticize this essay because it appears that Eliot is assenting to the men that she is writing to, rather than debating them. She as a writer did this in order so that she could win over males of authority who had some power to change the position of the female sex. This is no more apparent than when she mentions the fact that men will benefit from a more feely independent woman. One such example is when Margaret Fuller writes that, “Where they (women) are forbidden, because ‘such things are not proper for girls,’ they grow sullen and mischievous .” This particularly funny passage is almost like a subtle threat from the female sex, warning men that if they do not allow females to have freedom of say and freedom over their lives, then they will become “sullen and mischievous,” i.e. leave their men. After reading this, men most likely would adhere to what their partner wanted.

Wollstonecraft argued that if a woman was better properly educated and was allowed to have any job that she pleased then, “Women would not then marry for a support…Men pay a heavy price for their reluctance to encourage self-help and independent resources in women.” That last quote came from Eliot and it reinforces that idea of tempting men to allow women freedom that constantly appears throughout this essay. Many readers may view this as assent, but when really examined it’s just a very clever and effective way to enhance the women’s movement. Eliot was not trying to make a statement from this essay, like the other women reformists of the time. Rather, she was trying to get results. The ingenious method that Eliot uses throughout this essay is NLP—neuron linguistic programming. NLP is the careful use and positioning of language patterns to create changes in our thought patterns. Key language patterns will speak to the mind in such a way as to create a desired result without resistance--without explicitly asking for the result. NLP language patterns effectively by-pass the critical or pre-judgmental nature of our conscious thought processes. Quite simply put, Eliot’s method of by-passing the male figures in authorities’ critical factor was a brilliant attack strategy.

Another strategy that Eliot used was using the same phraseology that men used to describe women. This is another method of a woman writer appearing to see eye to eye with the male sex, all so that men in authority would not allow women to be in bondage anymore. She does indeed state that women are unreasoning animals and that they are ignorant and feeble-minded, but this is done for a purpose. Can anyone honestly believe that Eliot hated her own sex? That Eliot was for instance like a black Klansman? It’s a foolish idea to think that she was an example of someone who hated her own sex.

If women reading this piece today view Eliot as a sexist, then they should examine the piece more carefully. There are very subtle jokes at the expense of men in this essay; forms of letting off a little steam after writing in such a careful manner. Examples are when Eliot writes about how, “…no woman ever had them (passionate held beliefs or political ideas) in consequence of true culture, but only because her culture was shallow or unreal…” The question has to be, who created and supervised this vulgar culture full of “unreasoning animals?” The answer has to be men. Another subtle joke comes from Mary Wollstonecraft, when she writes that, “I therefore agree with the moralist who asserts ‘that women have seldom so much generosity as men’; and that their narrow affections, to which justice and humanity are often sacrificed, render the sex apparently inferior, especially as they are commonly inspired by men…” The especially part is key. It’s a misconception to presume that women hated this piece at that time, because they would have reveled at those inside jokes that men wouldn’t even get. The biggest joke is that men actually went along with the suggestions that Eliot was giving them, without realizing it.

There’s also a flaw in the argument that Eliot was a safe writer throughout her essay. At one point, she mentions that men want women to simply be their doll-like Madonna’s. She states that men love a woman who is content with her idle position and who doesn’t realize that she is in fact a slave to men. Those are very plainly stated viewpoints without any double entendre’s or obscuring lines to hide the meanings of the sentences; this is a belief that Eliot couldn’t contain and keep hidden anymore. Eliot preferred men to want a Madonna-like figure, opposed to a doll-like one. As Mary Pickering writes of Margaret Fuller:

“(Kimberly VanEsveld) Adams maintains that she (Fuller) sought to reconcile two images of women that she believed were epitomized by the Virgin Mary. The Madonna represented a self-taught, self-reliant person on one hand and a loving wife and mother on the other. By celebrating these two faces of the ideal woman, Fuller revealed her commitment to women’s equality, which was based on her belief that their souls were equal to men’s, and her essentialist position, which insisted on their nurturing, relational identity. Fuller sought to replicate Mary’s spiritual and intellectual independence and her happiness at being a wife and mother.”

This is the type of woman that Eliot wanted to be prevalent in society. She as a writer felt that men only respected the nurturing identity of the woman, without the intellectual independence to go along with that characteristic. Eliot wanted to emphasize that other aspect of women as well - the one that was slowly disappearing due to men’s belief at that time that women shouldn’t receive a proper education. Eliot realized that her viewpoint on Feminism was very different from the other Feminists of the time. Maybe she even realized that her viewpoint and methods were somewhat flawed, but her response to all of this would have been, “No Matter.” Eliot believed in fighting the good fight on her own terms and that’s the feeling that the reader gets when reading a passage like, “There is a perpetual action and reaction between individuals and institutions; we must try and mend both by little and little—the only way in which human things can be mended.” In terms of the success of the Feminist movement, she may have been correct in her beliefs.