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PARTISAN REVIEW
mos t bitter feelings about women 's subservience in ma rri age: "Sh e was
always trying to be wha t her husband wanted ." But the senten ce has its
second half: " ... and never able to repose on hi s delight in wha t she
was." George Eliot is referring, we can assume, to the reassuran ce tha t
she h erself needed and got from Lewes; she is telling us tha t even
fema le independence such as h ers is fin all y dependent on male a pprov–
al. That is rather a commanding message from the stronges t-minded
woman in Victori an England.
But women a re dependent no t on male app rova l a lone- th e word
Eliot uses is " delight," male deli ght, and deli ght is an erotic word. We
are u sefull y reminded tha t the crea tive imagina ti on has its own
biological well -springs; Eli o t's is a soc ial imagina ti on but it is also a
libidinal imagin a tion and it frequentl y breaks th rough the con stra ints
of culture. The strangest instance of thi s o f whi ch I am awa re in
George Eliot's own work is a t the end of
Mi ll on th e Floss
where
Maggie T ulli ver and her horribl e brother T om di e in each other's a rms.
It
is a scene of disquieting exalta ti on and we can have little doubt tha t
Eli ot means us to understand th a t the bro ther and sister are drown –
ing in the fl ood of their inces tuo us love. But thi s was of cou rse more
than could be handl ed exp li citl y in 1860; we race forwa rd to Iris Mur–
doch 's
A Severed H ead,
publi shed in 1961, close to a h undred years
la ter, with its entirely forthri ght theme of bro ther-sister incest. Wh en
in the earl y sixties Miss Murdoch' s novel was successfull y made
into a pl ay, the incestuou s bed could be shown on the stage with, in it,
in addition to the brother and sister, a second woman loved by both o f
them .
Although on first inspection there may seem to be littl e, o ther than
tha t both are women of hi ghl y trained in tell ect, to connect Iris
Murdoch with her di stingui shed Victorian compa trio t, actuall y Miss
Murdoch 's work is a firm bridge between George Eli o t's Eng land and
our own polymorphou s-perverse fi ctional day. A hundred yea rs apart,
bo th novelists concern themselves with the hindrances tha t life in
society imposes upon the development o f the individual. But even
more than Elio t, Iris Murdoch has in mind the male no less than the
female indi vidual. T here a re no heroines, fulfill ed or unfulfi ll ed, in
Mi ss Murdoch 's stories, onl y busy meaning less people of bo th sexes,
the products of a busy meaningless civili za ti on . We find no Dorothea
Brooke in the novels tha t come with such unbroken regul arity from
Miss Mu rdoch 's pen ; wha t Miss Murdoch writes a bo ut is no t the q uest
for female selfhood but-implicitl y-the need we all have for a new
way o f being, a new social and mo ral con sciou sness. She is no t a sexual
