User:El Staplador/Sandbox

Religion
The theme of religion is always present in Scenes of Clerical Life, but is not always the explicit focus. "Lewes had promised Blackwood that the Scenes would show the clergy in their 'human', rather than their 'theological' aspect. In fact, Eliot found the two aspects inseparable." Both "Mr Gilfil's Love Story" and "Janet's Repentance" are more concerned with an important female character than the clergyman, notwithstanding the title of the former. "Amos Barton" focusses on a figure who singularly fails to live out the religion he professes, but becomes an image of Christ through his suffering and grief, and, through his trials rather than through his successes, at last wins the love of his flock. In "Janet's Repentance", "Tryan, dying of tuberculosis at the age of thirty-three, is even more overtly an image of Christ than Amos Barton, embodying as well as preaching the gospel of forgiveness and redemption." Mr Gilfil in his later years also practises a doctrinally indistinct but none the less generous and kindly Christian lifestyle, demonstrating his beliefs through his actions rather than through any overt exposition of faith.

JR: "there is an ugly edge to the sectarianism that mocks Christianity's civilising mission of peace and goodwill." Eliot/Gribble xxvii

"The contest between law and gospel raised by Amos Barton's sermon is at the centre of the contestation of authority precipitated by Tryan's evangelicalism." Eliot/Gribble xxviii

"There is no attempt to deny that her growing love for him, with its strongly maternal element, is both sexual and spiritual." Eliot/Gribble xxxi

Social Issues
George Eliot moves beyond religious doctrine and examines how beliefs are expressed in action, drawing attention to a number of social issues. Amos Barton, delivering incomprehensible sermons to the inhabitants of the workhouse, can hardly afford to feed his own family. In contrast, the bachelor Edgar Tryan embraces a life of poverty through choice, so that he can relate to his poorer parishioners. Janet's Repentance presents, unusually for the nineteenth century, a realist depiction of bourgeois domestic violence. "Its hallmarks are male agression, female passivity and lack of self-esteem, and the wilful inaction of the surrounding community." (Lawson) The treatment of the heroine's alcoholism is also unusual: a "perspective on female alcoholism unmitigated by maternalism, poverty or wandering husbands [that was thought] necessary to a credibly sympathetic presentation of a "respectable" female alcoholic". p 138 http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=kKoVLTiumWkC

Even the quasi-Gothic melodrama of "Mr Gilfil's Love Story" raises some questions about social issues, dealing as it does with class, gender, and the aristocratic patronage of the arts. Captain Wybrow's privilege (as a male of higher status) over Caterina is exposed, as is the abuse of that privilege. Similarly, Sir Christopher's autocratic sway over his household and his estate is questioned: while his wishes for Maynard Gilfil and Caterina are ultimately fulfilled, it is at the expense of his dearer project, the inheritance.