George Eliot; a Critical Study of Her Life, Writings and PhilosophyCooke, George Willis
General
George Eliot; a Critical Study of Her Life, Writings and Philosophy
Cooke, George Willis
Eliot, George, 1819-1880; Novelists, English -- 19th century -- Biography
Her faithfulness to the life she describes is seen in her skilful use of
dialect. The sense of local coloring is greatly heightened by the dialogues
which speak the language of the people portrayed. When Luke describes his
rabbits as _nesh_ things, and Mrs. Jerome says little _gells_ should be
seen and not heard, and Tommy Trounsom mentions his readiness to pick up a
_chanch_ penny, we are brought closer to the homely life of these people.
She has so well succeeded, in Mr. Carson's words, in portraying "what they
call the dileck as is spoke hereabout," the reader is enabled to realize,
as he could not so well do by any other method, the homeliness and
rusticity of the life presented.
George Eliot has not attempted a great variety in the use of dialect, for
she has avoided unfamiliar words, and has made use of no expressions which
would puzzle her readers in the attempt to understand them. The words not
to be found in the dictionary are those which may in almost every instance
be heard in the speech of the uncultured wherever the English language is
spoken. Among others are these words: chapellin', chanch, coxy, corchey,
dawnin', fettle, franzy, gell, megrim, nattering, nesh, overrun, queechy,
plash. In a letter to Professor Skeats, published in the _Transactions of
the English_ _Dialect Society_, she has explained her methods of using
dialect.
It must be borne in mind that my inclination to be as close as I could
to the rendering of dialect, both in words and spelling, was constantly
checked by the artistic duty of being generally intelligible. But for
that check I should have given a stronger color to the dialogue in
_Adam Sede_, which is modelled on the talk of North Staffordshire and
the neighboring part of Derbyshire. The spelling, being determined by
my own ear alone, was necessarily a matter of anxiety, for it would be
as possible to quarrel about it as about the spelling of Oriental
names. The district imagined as the scene of _Silas Marner_ is in North
Warwickshire; but here, and in all my other presentations of English
life except _Adam Bede_, it has been my intention to give the general
physiognomy rather than a close portraiture of the provincial speech as
I have heard it in the Midland or Mercian region. It is a just demand
that art should keep clear of such specialties as would make it a
puzzle for the larger part of its public; still, one is not bound to
respect the lazy obtuseness or snobbish ignorance of people who do not
care to know more of their native tongue than the vocabulary of the
drawing-room and the newspaper.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account