Scenes of Clerical Life - Reception and Criticism

Reception and Criticism

The publication of Amos Barton caused some alarm among those who - rightly or wrongly - suspected that they had been the models for the characters, few of whom are described in a flattering manner. Eliot was forced to apologise to John Gwyther, who had been the local curate in her childhood, and to whom the character of Barton himself bore more than a passing resemblance.

Initial criticism of Amos Barton was mixed, with Blackwood's close friend W. G. Hamley "dead against Amos" and Thackeray diplomatically noncomittal. However, the complete Scenes of Clerical Life was met with 'just and discerning applause', and considerable speculation as to the identity of its author. Sales were no better than satisfactory, following a first printing of 1,500 copies, but Blackwood was none the less confident of Eliot's talent. Early reviewers deemed the writer "religious, without cant or intolerance" and "strong in his knowledge of the human heart". It was praised for its realism: one contemporary review noted approvingly that "the fictitious element is securely based upon a broad groundwork of actual truth, truth as well in detail as in general". Due to its subject matter, it was widely assumed to be the work of a real-life country parson; one such even attempted to take the credit. Popular opinion in Eliot's home town attributed the work to a Mr Joseph Liggins, who attempted ineffectually to deny the rumours, and eventually accepted the undeserved celebrity. George Eliot's "identity" was revealed in a letter to The Times, but this claim was immediately refuted in a letter from Eliot herself. In 1858 Charles Dickens wrote to Eliot to express his approval of the book, and was among the first to suggest that Scenes of Clerical Life might have been written by a woman.

I have been so strongly affected by the two first tales in the book you have had the kindness to send me, through Messrs. Blackwood, that I hope you will excuse my writing to you to express my admiration of their extraordinary merit. The exquisite truth and delicacy both of the humor and the pathos of these stories, I have never seen the like of; and they have impressed me in a manner that I should find it very difficult to describe to you. if I had the impertinence to try. In addressing these few words of thankfulness to the creator of the Sad Fortunes of the Rev. Amos Barton, and the sad love-story of Mr. Gilfil, I am (I presume) bound to adopt the name that it pleases that excellent writer to assume. I can suggest no better one: but I should have been strongly disposed, if I had been left to my own devices, to address the said writer as a woman. I have observed what seemed to me such womanly touches in those moving fictions, that the assurance on the title-page is insufficient to satisfy me even now. If they originated with no woman, I believe that no man ever before had the art of making himself mentally so like a woman since the world began.

More recently, Scenes of Clerical Life has been interpreted mainly in relation to Eliot's later works. It has been claimed that "in Scenes of Clerical Life, her style and manner as a novelist were still in the making". Ewen detects "an obvious awkwardness in the handling of the materials of the Scenes and a tendency... to moralize", but affirms that "these stories are germinal for the George Eliot to come". "The emergent novelist is glimpsed in the way in which the three scenes interpenetrate to establish a densely textured, cumulative study of a particular provincial location, its beliefs and customs and way of life."