lessons for fine ladies: tolstoj and george eliot's felix holt, the radical

American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages

Lessons for Fine Ladies: Tolstoj and George Eliot's Felix Holt, the RadicalAuthor(s): Philip RogersSource: The Slavic and East European Journal, Vol. 29, No. 4 (Winter, 1985), pp. 379-392Published by: American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European LanguagesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/307460 .

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LESSONS FOR FINE LADIES: TOLSTOJ AND GEORGE ELIOT'S FELIX HOLT THE RADICAL

Philip Rogers, SUNY-Binghamton

Tolstoj read George Eliot's Felix Holt, the Radical twice in his lifetime: the first reading was probably in 1867-68;' the second (in February 1885) he noted in a letter to his wife: "I'm reading Eliot's Felix Holt. It's a splendid book. I had read it before, but at a time when I was very stupid [he was then writing War and Peace], and I had completely forgotten it. It's a thing that needs to be translated, if it hasn't been translated. . . . I haven't fin- ished it yet, and I'm afraid the ending will spoil it. My brother Seryozha gave it to me. Tell him that it's all true what he told me about the book-it has everything."2

Plausible explanations of Tolstoj's admiration of Felix Holt and specula- tion as to Eliot's possible influence on Tolstoj have been advanced by Sho- shana Knapp in her recent article on Tolstoj and Eliot.3 Although the novel deals with numerous topics relevant to the moral preoccupations of the converted Tolstoj, the primary basis of Tolstoj's enthusiastic response appears to have been Eliot's criticism of the coquetry and materialism of middle-class women, what Felix Holt terms "fine-ladyism."4 Tolstoj's markings in his personal copy of the novel are almost exclusively confined to chapter 10, in which Felix scolds Esther Lyon in an attempt to convert her to a more serious outlook on life.5 (See Appendix.) Was Felix Holt a source of Tolstoj's ideas about the role of women? Tolstoj's markings provide a basis for discussing the possibility of Eliot's influence on Tolstoj as well as the broader subject of the nature, extent and origin of their apparent affinity.

Tolstoj's interest in Felix is not surprising; the vehement radical resembles the writer in many ways, both in his opinions and experience. He is, first of all, a radical by conversion from a life of debauchery. In revulsion from "making a hog of' himself in Glasgow, he looks "life fairly in the face to see what was to be done with it" (56). "The spawning of vice and hunger" in the slums convinces him that the purpose of life is "to help some one who needed it" (221-22). Skeptical of formal religions and conven-

SEEJ, Vol. 29, No. 4 (1985) 379



380 Slavic and East European Journal

tional piety, he nonetheless accepts the truths to be found in the Bible and sees the relevance of religious belief to political action: "Teach any truth you can," he tells Mr. Lyon, a dissenting minister, "whether it's in the Tes- tament or out of it. It's little enough anybody can ... drive into the skulls of a pence-counting, parcel-tying generation, such as mostly fill your chap- els" (59). He wants to become "a demagogue of a new sort" (224), and conducts a school for the children of the poor. Critical of the hypocrisy and materialism of the middle classes, he refuses both to continue running the family business and to seek employment suited to his considerable educa- tion, preferring the simple labor, dress, and diet of the working man: "As for me, I can live on bran porridge. I have the stomach of a rhinoceros ... I'll take no employment that obliges me to prop up my chin with a high cravat, and wear straps, and pass the livelong day with a set of fellows who spend their spare money on shirt-pins. That sort of work is really lower than many handicrafts; it only happens to be paid out of proportion" (56-57).

Felix also has views on language and literature. He prides himself on his plain-spoken honesty and scorns evasion of unpleasant realities: "O0, your niceties-I know what they are. . . . They all go on your system of make- believe. 'Rottenness' may suggest what is unpleasant, so you'd better say 'sugar-plums,' or something else such a long way off the fact that nobody is obliged to think of it. Those are your roundabout euphuisms that dress up swindling till it looks as well as honesty, and shoot with boiled pease instead of bullets. I hate your gentlemanly speakers" (63). Felix's scornful rejection of Esther's favorite writers-Byron ("A misanthropic debauchee ... whose notion of a hero was that he should disorder his stomach and despise mankind" [62]) and Chateaubriand ("Your dunce who can't do his sums always has a taste for the infinite" [108]) would not have been dis- puted by Tolstoj, who long before What is Art? had judged both to be inferior and boring.6

Finally, and perhaps most important to Tolstoj in his 1885 reading of the novel, Felix foresees that the needs and desires of a wife and family will inevitably compromise the aims of his idealistic mission. He thus anticipates the predicament from which Tolstoj suffered almost constantly after his conversion:7

I'll never marry .... I'll never look back and say, "I had a fine purpose once-I meant to keep my hands clean, and my soul upright, and to look truth in the face; but pray excuse me, I have a wife and children-I must lie and simper a little, else they'll starve"; or, "My wife is nice, she must have her bread well buttered, and her feelings will be hurt if she is not thought genteel." (66)

Rather than marry, Felix vows to "live on raw turnip to subdue [his] flesh" (66). The notion of controlling the passions by means of a vegetarian diet would not have seemed bizarre at Jasnaja Poljana in the late 1880s.



Tolstoj and Eliot 381

Felix's criticism of fine-ladyism may, as Knapp suggests, have influenced Tolstoj's comments on women in chapter 40 of What Then Must Be Done,8 but the similarity of the two writers' attitudes is, I think, more evident in The Kreutzer Sonata.9 Like Felix, Pozdny'ev is converted from a life of "swinish" debauchery: "I too lived like a pig of that sort" (190), he explains. Tolstoj's repentant wife-killer is, by his own admission "a sort of lunatic" (195) and more extreme in word and deed than Felix. But Felix nonetheless resembles him both in the manner and the motive of his preaching. As Felix admits to Mr. Lyon, he is "perhaps a little too fond of banging and smashing" (60). He speaks always "in fortissimo" (63) and his conversation (invariably preaching, as Esther notes, even to audiences of one) consists mostly of angry denunciations. Because Felix is "too ready at contempt and reprobation," Mr. Lyon feels obliged to warn him that "the scornful nostril and the high head gather not the odours that lie on the track of truth" (59). Felix's ideological passions, like Pozdny'ev's, always seem to arise from his relationships with women. References to his conversion focus on the angry, fallen women of Glasgow; he recalls "women breathing gin as they passed me on the stairs" (56) and the dark alleys "where there was little more than a chink of daylight to show the hatred in women's faces" (220).

Having spurred his conversion, women also evoke his angriest preaching. Relatively restrained in his talk with men, he makes no attempt to conceal his scorn for his mother and Esther.10 Eliot ironically notes that Felix "often amused himself and kept good-humoured by giving his mother answers that were unintelligible to her" (192). At Felix's first meeting with Esther he evinces sadistic delight in discovering a fine lady to torment and dominate:11

"Ho, ho!" thought Felix, "her father is frightened at her. How came he to have such a nice-stepping, long-necked peacock for his daughter? But she shall see that I am not frightened" (62) .... "A peacock! ... I should like to come and scold her every day, and make her cry and cut her fine hair off." (65)

Felix's eagerness to scold the peacock (every day) transparently disguises his attraction to fine hair and long necks.

Their susceptibility to women leads Felix and Pozdny'ev to markedly similar views of love and marriage as slavery. Both see men as helpless victims of female enticement; they "can't help loving them," Felix tells Esther, "and so they make themselves slaves to the petty desires of petty creatures" (109). To Pozdnysev, marriage is "just a trap":

Woman acts on Man's sensuality, and through his sensuality subdues him so that he only chooses formally, when in reality it is she who chooses. And once she has obtained these means she abuses them and acquires a terrible power over people. "Ah, you want us to be merely objects of sensuality-all right, as objects of sensuality we will enslave you," say the women. (174-78)




Esther Lyon is less calculating in her use of sensuality than Pozdny'ev's hypothetical woman, but she is fully conscious of its effects, especially when she confronts a man who feigns immunity:

Felix always opposed and criticized her; and besides that, he looked at her as if he never saw a single detail about her person-quite as if she were a middle-aged woman in a cap. She did not believe that he had ever admired her hands, or her long neck or her graceful movements, which had made all the girls at school call her Calypso. ... Felix ought properly to have been a little in love with her. . . (105)

Eliot's allusion to Calypso makes it clear that Esther is thinking about control of Felix and not merely his admiration.

Both Eliot and Tolstoj show that because sensual attractiveness is women's only source of power over men, they come to value dress and good looks above all else. The argument between Felix and Esther in chapter 10 arises from her admitting to him that she does not "mind about people having right opinions so that they had good taste" (107). Felix attempts to persuade her of the triviality and uselessness of "taste": "A fine-lady is a squirrel-headed thing, with small airs and small notions, about as applicable to the business of life as a pair of tweezers to the clear- ing of a forest. Ask your father what those old persecuted emigrant Puri- tans would have done with fine-lady wives and daughters." Esther is not disposed to be interested in the "business of life": "O there is no danger of such misalliances," she replies, "men who are unpleasant companions and make frights of themselves, are sure to get wives tasteless enough to suit them" (64). The same priority of taste prevails among women in Pozdny- sev's world:

It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness. A handsome woman talks nonsense, you listen and hear not nonsense but cleverness. She says and does horrid things, you at once persuade yourself that she is wonderfully clever and moral. . . . You see it is only we men who don't know (because we don't wish to know) what women know very well, that the most exalted poetic love, as we call it, depends not on moral qualities but on physical nearness and on the coiffure, and the color and cut of the dress. Ask an expert coquette who has set herself the task of captivating a man, which she would prefer to risk: to be convicted in his presence of lying, of cruelty, or even of dissoluteness, or to appear before him in an ugly and badly made dress-she will always prefer the first. (173-74)

While Tolstoj and George Eliot differ in many of their views on fine- ladies,12 they seem fully to agree that love relationships motivated by sensual attraction and superficial tastes are far more than merely a domestic problem. Society as a whole has been perverted by the false values of fine- ladyism. To Pozdnysev, women's domination by sensuality is pervasive: Where is it? Why everywhere, in everything! Go round the shops in any big town. There are goods worth millions and you cannot estimate the human labor expended on them, and look whether in nine-tenths of these shops there is anything for the use of men. All these luxuries of life are demanded and maintained by women.




Count all the factories. An enormous proportion of them produce useless ornaments, car- riages, furniture, and trinkets, for women. Millions of people, generations of slaves perish at hard labor in factories merely to satisfy women's caprice. Women, like queens, keep nine- tenths of mankind in bondage to heavy labor. (178-79)

To Felix, the fine-lady poses a special threat for those visionary men (i.e., himself) who might contribute to the well-being of mankind but are instead reduced, like the enslaved workers of Pozdny'ev's diatribe, to toiling for trivia. Because of the "petty desires of petty creatures . . . those who might do better spend their lives for nought-get checked in every great effort- toil with brain and limb for things that have no more to do with a manly life than tarts and confectionary. That's what makes women a curse; all life is stunted to suit their littleness. That's why I'll never love, if I can help it; and if I love, I'll bear it, and never marry" (109).

Eliot's and Tolstoj's embittered personae see the whole world-"all life," "nine-tenths of mankind"-as suffering from their problems. The hyperbol- ical rantings of these pariah-prophets function similarly in the two works, contributing an ironical leaven which lightens the burden of overt didactic intent without diminishing the force of its thought. The reader of Felix Holt and The Kreutzer Sonata is not compelled to assent to the preachings of Felix and Pozdny'ev; the denunciations of madman and radical are aspects of characterization, thoughts to be experienced rather than ideologies to be believed.

Unlike The Kreutzer Sonata, Felix Holt ends on an optimistic note, with the marriage of a chastened Felix and the converted Esther (the conclusion, one suspects, that Tolstoj feared would spoil the novel for him). Eliot solves the problem of the fine-lady by harnessing for constructive purposes her ability to motivate men: Calypso becomes Penelope. Felix succeeds in changing Esther, but she in turn also influences him for the better. Felix's hopes no less than his fears are related to his sense of women's influence. Anticipating the happy ending in store for him, he challenges Esther by wondering "whether the subtle measuring of forces will ever come to mea- sure the force there would be in one beautiful woman whose mind was as noble as her face was beautiful-who made a man's passion for her rush in one current with all the great aims of his life" (223).

Nothing resembling the hopeful ending of Felix Holt can be found in The Kreutzer Sonata, but in What Then Must We Do? Tolstoj defines an inspira- tional role for women that closely resembles Felix's idea of woman's force:13 Oh, if these women comprehended their significance and their strength, and used it in the work of saving their husbands, brothers, and children, in saving all men!

Women, mothers, of the wealthy classes! The salvation of the men of our class from the evils they suffer from is only in your hands! Not women who are busy with their waists, bustles, hair dressing, and fascination for men ... but those in whose hands, more than in those of anybody else, lies the salvation of the men of our class from the calamities which are overwhelming them.14




The numerous similarities between Felix Holt and The Kreutzer Sonata would appear to justify the conclusion that Eliot's novel influenced Tol- stoj's later work; however, the equally marked resemblances of Felix Holt to Tolstoj's Family Happiness, which he wrote more than five years before the publication of Felix Holt, call this assumption into question. Tolstoj's interest in Felix Holt was probably piqued by the similarity of Felix's courtship of Esther Lyon to Tolstoj's own wooing of Valerija Arsen'eva, the autobiographical basis of Family Happiness. Tolstoj's diary comments on Valerija show the same mixture of attraction and repulsion that Felix feels for Esther:'5

June 18, 1856. Valerya chattered about clothes and the coronation. Frivolity with her appears to be not transient, but an enduring passion.

June 28. Valerya is extremely badly educated, and ignorant if not stupid. July 1. Spent the whole day with Valerya. She had a white dress on and bare arms, and

hers are not shapely. This upset me. I began to pinch her morally and so cruelly that she did not complete her smiles. There were tears in her smile.

July 2. Valerya was writing in a dark room, and again wore a horrid showy morning-gown. She was cold and self-reliant, showed me a letter to her sister in which she says I am an egoist, and so on.

July 12. Valerya was nicer than ever, but her frivolity and absence of care for anything serious is terrifying. .... However I spent the day very pleasantly.

July 13. I am afraid of marriage as well as of baseness, i.e. of amusing myself with her. But to marry, much would have to be changed, and I have still much work to do on myself.

July 30. ValIrya quite in negligee. I disliked her very much and I made stupid remarks about David Copperfield who had much to put up with.16

Aug. 10. Valerya and I talked about marriage. She is not stupid and is remarkably kind.

Tolstoj's letters to Valerija consist largely of exhortations to improve herself so as to become worthy of him. As he explained, "I so ardently wish to love you that I'm teaching you how to make me love you."17 For the most part, this teaching comprises a catalogue of her deficiencies. Like Felix, he is insultingly blunt:

Please don't waste your evenings. Take yourself in hand. Not simply so that the evening's occupations will be useful to you, but so as to teach yourself to overcome bad tendencies and laziness. I stopped here and thought for a long time about your character. Your principal defect is weakness of character, and all the other minor defects come from it. Cultivate strength of will. Take yourself in hand and fight persistently against your bad habits.18

He tries to elevate her taste in reading: "How is it that you say nothing about Dickens and Thackeray? Is it possible you find them boring? And what's this nonsense you've been reading: Notice sur les op6ras?"'9 One day, but not soon, he thinks, she may be able to share his literary tastes: "It's impossible for you to understand (perhaps you'll understand in time) the indescribably great pleasure one feels from understanding and loving poetry ...."20 Tolstoj's attempts to discover good qualities in Valerija are




even more devastating than the criticisms: "I know many women more intelligent than you, but I've never met one more honest."21 "Do write for goodness sake, as quickly and as fully and as incoherently and clumsily -and therefore as sincerely-as you can."22 At times, Tolstoj is as much "babu'ka" as "papa": "Please go for a walk every day whatever the weather. It's excellent, any doctor will tell you. And wear a corset, and put on your stockings yourself.

... ."23 But the primary theme of his letters to Valerija is

always "the path of perfection": "The main thing is-live in such a way that when you go to bed you can say to yourself: today (1) I did good to some- one and (2) I became a little better myself. Please, please try to plan the day's occupations in advance and to check up on yourself in the evening."24 Their love, or rather her love for him, is measured in terms of her success- ful compliance to his plan of renovating her character: "Nothing else matters as long as you love me and are as I wish, i.e. perfect; and from your letter it seemed to me that you both loved me and were beginning to understand life more seriously and to love the good and to find pleasure in watching yourself and going forward along the path of perfection."25 It is difficult to believe that when he wrote these letters Tolstoj was only twenty- eight, Valerija twenty.

None of Valerija's replies to Tolstoj's letters has survived. One can imagine, however, that her reaction to them might well have resembled Esther's response to Felix's moral hectoring:26 It is difficult for a woman to try to be anything good when she is not believed in-when it is always supposed that she must be contemptible .... I have great faults. I know I am selfish, and think too much of my own small tastes and too little of what affects others. But I am not stupid. I am not unfeeling.... You talk to me like an angry pedagogue. Were you always wise? (224)

Family Happiness, written three years after Tolstoj broke off his pedagog- ical project with Valerija, explores the courtship and marriage of a similarly ill-matched pair.27 In contrast to the bitterness of his diary entries, Tolstoj's fictional treatment of the relationship is objective-the story is told from the woman's point of view-and ironical. The dynamics of the love between young and flighty Ma'a (Valerija) and morally serious Sergej Mi-

xajlovi, (Tolstoj) is markedly similar to the pedagogue-ingenue relationship

of Felix and Esther. Both men are introduced to the younger women through their fathers and consequently assume a paternal tone in dealing with the daughters. Sergej is Ma'a's legal guardian, literally a substitute father; Felix appeals to Mr. Lyon's moral standards, goading Esther to ask herself "whether life is not as solemn a thing as your father takes it to be" (108). Both Sergej and Felix are moralists whose interest in women expresses itself in the desire to form their character. Their lessons are essen- tially the same; both recommend a simple, ascetic life devoted to helping others. The effectiveness of their teaching is, however, undermined by sour




dispositions and a sanctimonious, condescending manner. If the young women are vain, their teacher-lovers are no less afflicted with spiritual pride. In addition to their concern for serious matters (the welfare of the serfs, extension of the franchise) both chide their lovers about trivia and, as Masa complains, cast their youth and beauty in their teeth (468). Like Felix, Sergej is sharply critical of women's preoccupation with looks and dress: Ma'a notes "his complete indifference and even contempt for my personal appearance. Never by word or look did he imply that I was pretty; on the contrary, he frowned and laughed, whenever the word was applied to me in his presence. . . . On special days Katya liked to dress me out in fine clothes and to arrange my hair effectively; but my finery met only with mockery from him.. ." (19).

But for both men, scolding fine ladies is the first step in wooing them. As their interest deepens, both announce vows never to marry (perverse undec- larations of love), and justify their decisions with reasons flattering to their sense of moral rectitude. Felix: Women will distract me from my noble aims; Sergej: She is young, life is a may-game to her. She wants amuse- ment, I want something different (40). Both, of course, are posing-spread- ing the feathers in courtship displays of moral earnestness and emotional loftiness. In effect, the vows not to marry are challenges to the women to make themselves worthy of such sober and virtuous men. The final irony of this egregious posturing is that both men are obviously attracted to the very peacock charms they denounce. Again in this instance Eliot's and Tolstoj's irony complicates and enriches the development of the fine-lady theme.

The women's response to Felix and Sergej is likewise similar. Ma'a and Esther resent the criticism and scolding and see their men as assuming an unwarranted religious authority over their lives. Ma'a feels that she is "obliged to tell" Sergej "in detail and with perfect frankness, all my good actions, and to confess, as if I were in church, all that he might disapprove of" (16). Esther too recognizes that Felix's criticism of her is a quasi- religious bullying: "You really should found a sect. Preaching is your vocation. It is a pity you should ever have an audience of only one" (110). On the other hand, both women are at first flattered by their lovers' scolding, because such concern for their behavior represents a serious interest in them. Esther knows Felix's "indignant words were a tribute to her: he thought she was worth more pains than the women of whom he took no notice. ... But did he love her one little bit, and was that the reason why he wanted her to change?" (110). Ma'a puts up with Sergej's patronizing for the same reason: "He spoke to me like a father or an uncle and I felt he kept a constant check upon himself in order to keep on my level. Though I was hurt that he considered me as inferior to himself, I was pleased that for me alone he thought it necessary to try to be different" (12-13). Neither woman is deceived as to the real meaning of the vow never to marry.




Both Mava and Esther accept their lovers' beliefs and are obliged to admit to themselves that they are better women for doing so. In this self- improvement, however, they are conscious of painful restrictions. Esther comes to feel "an unacknowledged yet constraining presence,"' knowing that with Felix's love "her life would be exalted into something quite new-into a sort of difficult blessedness, such as one may imagine in beings who are conscious of painfully growing into the possession of higher powers" (197). Ma'a's acceptance of Sergej's beliefs and tastes is accompanied by an uneasy sense of misrepresentation and deception. To please him she must falsify herself:

I valued his love; I felt that he thought me better than all other young women in the world and I could not help wishing him to go on being deceived about me. Without wishing to deceive him, I did deceive, and I became better myself while deceiving him. ... All my thoughts and feelings of that time were not really mine; they were his thoughts and feelings, which had suddenly become mine. .... (20-21)

Mala's acquiescence is, of course, temporary, and in fact becomes a source of their misunderstanding one another after marriage, when the happiness of their simple rural life of good works is spoiled by the flowering of Ma'a's suppressed individuality in St. Petersburg. Neither heroine passively submits to having her character formed; in both works the strength of the final relationship results not merely from the woman's acceptance of her lover's serious values; the achievement of mature love is a mutual process in which the women play a crucial role in chastening the spiritual pride of their formerly condescending lovers. Felix's release from jail is brought about by Esther's testimony; it is Ma'a's plain speaking to Sergej at the end of Family Happiness that restores honesty to their marriage.

While the marked similarity of Eliot's and Tolstoj's treatment of their lovers in Felix Holt and Family Happiness is not the result of Tolstoj's reading Felix Holt, it does suggest that Tolstoj's admiration of Felix Holt can be attributed to his discovering in George Eliot the sympathetic voice of a kindred spirit. Eliot wrote about a kind of love that had long interested him, corroborating and perhaps augmenting beliefs and prejudices which, in the post-conversion years, were distilled in the inspired ravings of The Kreutzer Sonata. The similarity in the pedagogic love relationships in Eliot and Tolstoj is not, however, merely a consequence of contempora- neity, an affinity resulting from common cultural influences. In depicting these relationships both writers draw from the same source-Rousseau's La nouvelle HiloYse.

For both Eliot and Tolstoj, Rousseau is more than merely a source of ideas; the importance of his role in their development is unique. In response to Emerson's asking George Eliot "what had first awakened her to deep reflection, she answered Rousseau's Confessions."28 She thought it was "worthwhile to undertake all the labour of learning French if it




resulted in nothing more" than reading the Confessions.29 "Rousseau's genius," she wrote to a friend, "has sent that electric thrill through my intellectual and moral frame which has awakened me to new perceptions, which has made man and nature a fresh world of thought and feeling to me. .. ."30 Tolstoj's estimation of Rousseau verges on idolatry: "I read all of Rousseau, all twenty volumes, including A Dictionary of Music. I was more than delighted with him-I idolized him. At 15 I wore a medallion ith his portrait around my neck instead of a cross. Many of his pages are so close to me that it seems to me I wrote them myself."31

The correspondence of Julie and her tutor-lover, Saint-Preux, in La nouvelle Hiloise anticipates in its didactic digressions the social criticism implicit in the courtship of Eliot's and Tolstoj's lovers. For Saint-Preux and Julie, love is a problem to solve and loving a process of mutual analysis and criticism, an unfolding passionate debate. For them, the questions of how to love and how to live are inseparable. In Saint-Preux's billets-doux sighs alternate with lists of recommended reading and programs of self- improvement for Julie.32 The coquetry and hypocrisy of Parisian fine-ladies provoke his denunciation. In judging women, his primary criterion is their suitability for marriage, in Felix Holt's words, "the real business of life" (64). A Parisian woman might be a friend, but never a wife or mother. He vows never to marry one.33

Anticipating the views of Pozdny'ev and Felix Holt, Rousseau stresses the vast power of women's love over men: "Les hommes seront toujours ce qu'il plaira aux femmes; si vous voulez donc qu'ils deviennent grands et vertueux, apprenez aux femmes ce que c'est que grandeur d'ame et vertu."34 In his study of Rousseau's influence on Tolstoj, Milan Markovitch summa- rizes their shared views on the subject of women's power: "Rousseau et Tolstoi, conscients de la puissance de l'amour sur les hommes, font dans le monde une part tres large et meme prepond6rante a l'influence de la femme. Ils lui attribuent tout le bien et tout le mal qui se fait sur la terre et croient en somme que d'elle depend le salut ou la perte de l'humanit6 entiere."35 As Markovitch notes, Rousseau's and Tolstoj's view of women's power is dualistic; as wives and mothers behaving in accordance with the divine law of Nature, they are potential saviors of husbands and sons.36 Indeed, for Rousseau, women's ultimate role is to save mankind: "La femme doit s'employer a regenerer l'humanit6. .. ."'37 But corrupted by the luxury and idleness fostered by false social values, their influence (especially as represented by Tolstoj) is altogether malign. Felix Holt's view of women expresses the same dualism: because "men can't help loving them and ... make themselves slaves," women have the power to be "either a blessing or a curse," to inspire men to fulfill "great aims" or, on the other hand, to stunt all life to suit their littleness (109).

To the modern reader, however, the value of Eliot's and Tolstoj's novels has little to do with their opinions-or Rousseau's-about women. We




read Tolstoj not because he champions breast-feeding or chastity, but for the experience of his fiction, the life and world of his characters.38 Abstrac- ted from the railway carriage of his life, Pozdny'ev's ideas would either bore or infuriate. Felix's pronouncements on Byron and the pilgrims are merely banal until his desire to cut off Esther's pretty hair deepens our insight into his motives.39 In the rendering of ideology as a function of character Rousseau once again provided the model; his most significant influence on Eliot and Tolstoj lies less in his particular opinions than in his representation of opinion-in the broadest sense, belief-as inseparable from personality and experience, as much a function of the inner life as jealousy and desire. The intense, subjective experience of Rousseau's matur- ing worldview in The Confessions, his representation of the complex dynamics of love and responsibility in La nouvelle Hiloise are far more important influences on the fiction of Eliot and Tolstoj than his prejudices about city and country. Eliot's account of Rousseau's effect on her stresses not his beliefs, but rather the breadth and comprehensiveness of his influence: "His genius sent that electric thrill through my intellectual and moral frame, made man and nature a fresh world of thought and feeling to me" (my emphasis).40

The ultimate similarity of Pozdnysev and Sergej to Felix, and of Ma'a to Esther lies in the identity of their "thought and feeling." Their opinions of love, marriage, and fine-ladies are deeply felt motives in their lives and influential ideas of their age, but they are never offered to the reader as simply right or wrong. In Eliot and Tolstoj at their best, belief is experienced and lived so fully that it stands beyond simplistic ideological judgment.

NOTES

1 Tolstoj's personal copy of Felix Holt was the Tauchnitz edition (Leipzig, 1867). Because Tolstoj neglected his diary while occupied with writing War and Peace, the record of his reading during this period is incomplete. His usual practice, however, was to read new works by English writers he admired soon after they were published by Tauchnitz. For example, he read Eliot's Adam Bede, published in February 1859, in October 1859; Thackery's The Newcomes (1855) he read in 1856; Dickens's Bleak House (1853) in 1854, Our Mutual Friend (1865) in 1865, and Little Dorrit (1856) he read as it was issued in serial volumes. For chronology see N.N. Gusev, Letopis' zizni i tvoricestva L.N. Tolstogo, ed. L.D. Opul'skaja, vol. 1 (M.: GIXL, 1958).

2 Tolstoy's Letters, ed. and trans. R.F. Christian (2 vols.; N.Y.: Scribner's, 1978), II, 377. 3 "Tolstoj's Reading of George Eliot," SEEJ 27 (1983), 318-26 presents useful material

regarding the relationship of the two writers and notes previous studies of the subject; consequently I do not repeat that information here. Tolstoj's appreciation for George Eliot generally is also surveyed by W. Gareth Jones, "George Eliot's Adam Bede and Tolstoy's Conception of Anna Karenina," Modern Language Review 61, no. 2 (1966), 473-81.




4 George Eliot, Felix Holt, the Radical, ed. Fred C. Thomson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), 64. Further citations in the text refer to this edition.

5 I am preparing a study of his other annotation of Felix Holt for separate publication. 6 Tolstoj told V.E Lazurskij that he had tried many times to read Chateaubriand but could

never get through either Rene' or Le genie du christianisme (Literaturnoe nasledstvo 37-38 [M.: AN SSSR, 1939], 482). In a letter to Fet (May 1866) he praises Victor Hugo at the expense of "the Byrons and Walterscotts [sic]," whom he finds unmemorable (Letters, I, 206).

7 The incompatibility of his beliefs and family life is a constant theme of his letters during this period. See especially his letter to his wife of 15-18 December 1885 (Letters, II, 393-99).

8 Knapp, 324. 9 Trans. Aylmer Maude (N.Y.: Signet, 1960). All quotations are from this edition and noted

in the text. 10 Squelched in debate among the miners at Sproxton (121), Felix departs quickly and

quietly. 11 Cf. Pozdnysev's pleasure in antagonizing the liberated woman, whose idealistic view of

love provokes the telling of his tale (163-64). 12 Tolstoj, for example, is much more concerned with woman's role as mother. My

comparison of their views is limited here to ideas suggested by his markings in Felix Holt. 13 This, I think, is the main evidence in support of Knapp's view that Felix Holt influenced

chapter 40 of What Then Must We Do?. 14 The Complete Works of Count Tolstoy, trans. Leo Wiener (24 vols.; London: J.M. Dent &

Co., 1904-1905), XVII, 333. 15 The Private Diary of Leo Tolstoy 1853-1857, ed. and trans. Aylmer Maude (London:

Heinemann, 1927), 161-91 passim. 16 Dickens's David Copperfield is the perfect example of one who succumbs to girlish charm

and discovers too late that he is bound to a "child-wife." In much the same way that Tolstoj tries to change Valerija, David attempts to form Dora's character. He fails. Dora, who wishes to play a part in the creative life of her novelist husband (a second point of identification for Tolstoj) ends up pathetically holding his pens as he writes. Dickens explains in chap. 41 of David Copperfield that Dora's upbringing had made her into a house pet, a fact obviously appreciated by Tolstoj, who named his favorite setter "Dora" in her honor (Literaturnoe nasledstvo 37-38 [M.: AN SSSR, 1939], 584).

17 Nov. 9, 1856, Letters, I, 70. 18 Nov. 19, Ibid., 74. 19 Dec. 7, Ibid., 86. 20 Nov. 23-24, Ibid., 80. 21 Nov. 9, Ibid., 70. 22 Ibid. 23 Nov. 2, Ibid., 66. 24 Ibid. 25 Nov. 23-24, Ibid, 78. 26 That her replies were not always docile can be inferred from Tolstoj's letter of Dec. 12:

"You're angry that I'm only able to give lectures. But don't you see, I write to you about my plans for the future, my ideas as to how one should live ... I write about them almost with tears in my eyes (believe me); but to you it's all lecturing and boredom" (Ibid., 86).

27 Trans. J.D. Duff (N. Y.: Signet, 196). All quotations are from this edition and noted in the text.

28 Gordon S. Haight, George Eliot (N.Y.: Oxford Univ. Press, 1968), 65. 29 Ibid.




30 Haight, 60. 31 Boris Eikhenbaum, The Young Tolstoi, trans. Gary Kern (Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1972), 51 n.

Milan Markovitch treats the subject exhaustively in Jean-Jacques Rousseau et Tolstoi (Paris: Librairie Ancienne Honor6 Champion, 1928).

32 Julie, ou la nouvelle HIlofse, ed. Ren6 Pomeau (Paris: Garnier, 1960), 33-34. 33 Ibid., 242-56. 34 Premier discours, quoted in Markovitch, 268. 35 Markovitch, 268. See also Boris Eikhenbaum, Tolstoi in the Seventies (Ann Arbor: Ardis,

1982), 94-106 for discussion of other influences on Tolstoj's ideas about women. 36 Ibid., 269. 37 Deuxieme discours, quoted in Markovitch, 269. 38 Edward Wasiolek's defense of Family Happiness from this point of view is a necessary

corrective to critical preoccupation with overt thematic content; see his Tolstoy's Major Fiction (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1978), 39-50.

39 Felix's meditation on the cropping of Esther is, as Laurence Lerner points out, one of the novel's most persuasive characterizations (The Truth-tellers [N.Y.: Schocken, 1967], 47-52).

40 Haight, 60.

APPENDIX

The following markings are found in vol. 1, pp. 173-75 of Tolstoj's copy of Felix Holt, the Radical (Leipzig: Bernard Tauchnitz, 1867), 2 vols. oct., kept in the archive of the Estate- Museum, Jasnaja Poljana. Tolstoj marked his books in several ways: with black pencil (under- lining and occasionally bracketing individual words and sentences; with marginal lines, check marks and x's), fingernail impressions, and turned-back page corners. His markings in Felix Holt are all full-sentence underlinings. In the following text I have included several unmarked sentences to clarify the context of his underlinings, which are bracketed.

"Why do you read this mawkish stuff on a Sunday, for example?" he said, snatching up "Rene," and running his eye over the pages.

"Why don't you always go to chapel, Mr. Holt, and read Howe's 'Living Temple,' and join the Church?"

"There's just the difference between us,-I know why I don't do those things. I distinctly see that I can do something better. I have other principles, and should sink myself by doing what I don't recognize as best."

"I understand," said Esther, as lightly as she could, to conceal her bitterness. "I am a lower kind of being, and could not so easily sink myself."

["Not by entering into your father's ideas. If a woman really believes herself to be a lower kind of being, she should place herself in subjection; she should be ruled by the thoughts of her father or husband. If not, let her show her power of choosing something better. You must know that your father's principles are greater and worthier than what guides your life. You have no reason but idle fancy and selfish inclination for shirking his teaching and giving your soul up to trifles."]




"How am I to oblige you? By joining the Church?" ["No; but by asking yourself whether life is not as solemn a thing as your father takes it to

be,-in which you may be either a blessing or a curse to many.] You know you have never done that. You don't care to be better than a bird trimming its feathers and pecking about after what pleases it. [You are discontented with the world because you can't get just the small things that suit your pleasure, not because it's a world where myriads of men and women are ground by wrong and misery, and tainted with pollution."]

"Pray go on, Mr. Holt. Relieve yourself of these burning truths. I am sure they must be troublesome to carry unuttered."

["Yes, they are," said Felix, pausing, and standing not far off her. "I can't bear to see you going the way of the foolish women who spoil men's lives. Men can't help loving them, and so they make themselves slaves to the petty desires of petty creatures. That's the way those who might do better spend their lives for nought,-get checked in every great effort,-toil with brain and limb for things that have no more to do with a manly life than tarts and confectionary. That's what makes women a curse; all life is stunted to suit their littleness. That's why I'll never love, if I can help it; and if I love, I'll bear it, and never marry."]

"I ought to be very much obliged to you for giving me your confidence so freely." ["Ah! now you are offended with me, and disgusted with me. I expected it would be so. A

woman doesn't like a man who tells her the truth." "I think you boast a little too much of your truth-telling, Mr. Holt," said Esther, flashing

out at last. "That virtue is apt to be easy to people when they only wound others and not themselves. Telling the truth often means no more than taking a liberty."

"Yes, I suppose I should have been taking a liberty if I had tried to drag you back by the skirt when I saw you running into a pit."

"You should really found a sect. Preaching is your vocation. It is a pity you should ever have an audience of only one."]



lessons for fine ladies: tolstoj and george eliot's felix holt, the radical

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