ELH

ELH 68.1 (2001) 155-177

Felix Holt: Independent Spokesman or Eliot's Mouthpiece?

Hilda Hollis

Of George Eliot's novels, Felix Holt the Radical is the most difficult for those critics wanting to dislodge Eliot from the conservative camp that so quickly appropriated her work, since Felix himself is usually read as a mouthpiece revealing Eliot's political sympathies. I suggest, however, that Felix Holt is a genuinely dialogic novel in which Eliot is exploring and testing, rather than simply endorsing, Felix's opinions. Rather than serving as a proof text for discussing Eliot's political conservatism, Felix Holt can contribute to the reevaluation of Eliot. ¹ The novel raises very serious questions about Felix's ideology of submission that critics have overlooked in their narrow focus on Felix as hero and authorial mouthpiece. Some of Eliot's subversiveness in the novel has been uncovered in the recent focus on Mrs. Transome, but the questioning nature of the novel is much more widespread than this section. ² The main (Felix) plot itself, I argue, is not monologic. Felix Holt allows Eliot to explore the conflicting demands of the individual and the state; Felix's argument for conformity and submission to the state is contested by the lack of beneficial change for the individuals who most need it. ³

Felix Holt explores the conflict between peace and social justice. While Felix, under the guise of radicalism, promulgates a conservative message supporting a peaceful continuation of the status quo, the text contains other voices that question Felix's words. Their presence makes it impossible to identify Felix absolutely with Eliot. This reading of Felix Holt is supported by The Spanish Gypsy, which also explores the conflicting positions found in the process and implementation of social change. The concurrently written verse drama is a significant point of comparison because it examines the violent solution that Felix abhors and considers the victims on both sides as well as the power-mongers. ⁴ The Spanish Gypsy does not indicate that Eliot favors the retention of the status quo, but rather shows the cost of change and the conflict between various "goods." [End Page 155]

While working on both Felix Holt and The Spanish Gypsy, Eliot was strongly influenced by Greek tragedy. ⁵ In "The Antigone and Its Moral," an essay written ten years before Felix Holt, Eliot disputes those critics who understand Antigone's heroes monologically: "It is a very superficial criticism which interprets the character of Creon as that of a hypocritical tyrant, and regards Antigone as a blameless victim." ⁶ In her review she writes: "The turning point of the tragedy is not, as it is stated to be in the argument prefixed to this edition, 'reverence for the dead and the importance of the sacred rites of burial,' but the conflict between these and obedience to the State." ⁷ Theoretical truth, for Eliot, is destroyed in the tragic conflict of life. There is no commonly held monolithic point of view, and she contends that this is something shared with life:

Reformers, martyrs, revolutionists, are never fighting against evil only; they are also placing themselves in opposition to a good--to a valid principle which cannot be infringed without harm. Resist the payment of ship-money, you bring on civil war; preach against false doctrines, you disturb feeble minds and set them adrift on a sea of doubt; make a new road, and you annihilate vested interests; cultivate a new region of the earth, and you exterminate a race of men. ⁸

Eliot refutes the attempt to make a single view universal: "lofty words----are not becoming to mortals." ⁹

I. Questioning Felix as Eliot's Mouthpiece

Eliot is usually judged by Felix's lofty words--what Harold Transome terms "impracticable notions of loftiness and purity." ¹⁰ For instance, Thomas Pinney asserts that "as a political thinker Felix is only a mouthpiece for his creator," and Kathleen Blake comments that we "can take Felix Holt as a spokesman for her [Eliot's] political views, more than is usually safe when it comes to fictional characters...