George Eliot's Villains and Heroes

The latest BBC-TV DVDs that my dad and I have been watching are the BBC -TV adaptations of 19th Century British writer George Eliot's novels.

So far, we've watched 3 in the series- Daniel Deronda, Silas Marner, The Mill On The Floss.

I've never read any of George Eliot's novels. I read the Classic Comics edition of Silas Marner when I was a kid.

But watching the series, I can tell that George Eliot was an excellent observer of human nature and an adept profiler of people's characters.

Because all the characters you can see in these shows come across as being real people- even the minor characters.

When I watched the BBC-TV adaptation of Daniel Deronda, there was one scene that particularly stuck out in my mind.

As I say, I had never read Daniel Deronda.

So consequently, I didn't know what any of the characters were like ahead of time.

But there was one extremely clever scene of one of the characters in the story- Henleigh Grandcourt.

I had no idea what Henleigh Grandcourt was like. This scene was one of the first introductions to him.

At first the scene comes across as being quite comical. There's a little white furry dog jumping into the air trying to get a biscuit from Grandcourt's hands.

The scene showed the dog leaping into the air about 4 or 5 times trying to get the biscuit.

I laughed when I first saw the scene because it reminded me of a little furry white dog called Tamber that my sister used to own. Tamber would often leap into the air in such a manner trying to get at a treat.

But then the really disturbing part came after the 5th time this little furry white dog of Grandcourt leapt into the air. The little dog almost had the biscuit. You could tell on the 6th attempt that the little dog was going to get the biscuit.

But then just as the little dog leaps into the air for the 6th time, Grandcourt takes the cookie away.

And then the camera pans in on to Grandcourt's lap where there's apparently another little dog lying.

Grandcourt takes the biscuit and gives it to the little dog on his lap who promptly chews it up.

The little dog on Grandcourt's lap has exerted no effort to get at the biscuit.

And the little dog who has leapt into the air trying to get at the biscuit receives nothing.

That little scene said so much.

From that one little scene, I could determine right then and there that this character Henleigh Grandcourt was an a--hole.


And so he turned out to be.

He was a brutal and controlling individual.

He had an affair with one woman and several children by her but he never married her.

Instead he married the woman that every man in the district was after- Gwendoline.

But even Gwendoline he doesn't really love. Gwendoline you see was a free spirit and Grandcourt wanted to marry her (since every other single man wanted her) and then he wanted to use marriage to control her and break her spirit.

He just married her basically the way one would capture a small wild bird and then stick it in a gilded cage but it was still a cage.

I'd recommend seeing this series or reading the book if you have not done so.

There is a genuinely heroic figure in the story- Daniel Deronda- who saves a woman from drowning herself in the river- and then saves another woman- Gwendoline- by giving her the hope and courage to recover her true sense of self that was slowly being stifled under Grandcourt's control.

Silas Marner was another good story.

It turns out Silas Marner was a heroic figure as well.

But a heroic figure that more of us could relate to better than Daniel Deronda.

For it seemed that Daniel Deronda was always a genuinely good person.

We meet and encounter such people in our lives.

Such people are extremely rare individuals though.

But somehow being in the presence of such people allows us to recapture and rekindle whatever goodness we have in ourselves that many of us have buried while living and coping in the real world.

Silas Marner was a man who seemed to have everything going for him. He had friends. He was a respected member of a church. He had a young woman he liked and wanted to marry.

Then Silas is falsely accused of theft. The church he attends turns his back on him and casts him out of the congregation.

The woman he wants to marry is seen going off with the man who in all probability is the real thief.

So Silas leaves and goes to another town in another part of England.

A weaver by trade, Silas prospers at his occupation but having been so previously hurt in human relationships by the way he was treated in the other town, Silas shuts himself off from most human contact and the only thing he cares about is the money that he is saving for himself under a brick in his cottage floor.

Then one night his money is stolen and Silas seems to have lost everything.

Silas now seems broken in spirit.

But a couple of weeks later, a woman carrying a small child walks through the forest wanting to get to the village church hoping to confront the child's father who has refused to publicly acknowledge his child.

But it's a cold snowy night and the woman collapses in the snow where she eventually freezes to death.

The child wanders through the snow and finds Silas' cottage door open.

She walks in and goes to sleep by the fireplace.

Silas returns home and seeing the child's blond curls by the fireplace thinks that his gold has returned.

Instead it's a child.

The father of the child does not step up to the plate when the mother's body is discovered (because he wants to marry someone else and now that the woman whom he had secretly married when she became pregnant is now dead- this man Godfrey Cass is now free to marry whom he will).

Silas it turns out becomes a good and loving father to the child he has named Eppie.

The Marner household is not extravagant or luxurious but it's comfortable. Eppie has enough food to eat and enough clothes to wear.

And she is raised in an atmosphere of love.

When Eppie turns 16, then Godfrey Cass decides to become a man for the first time in his life and acknowledge the child as his own.

He wants to take her away from Silas who has raised her and looked after her all these years.

I'll let you read the story or watch the film yourself to let you know how it ends.

For my real purpose in writing these reviews was to give you a sense of the villains and the heroes to be found in George Eliot's (real name Mary Ann Evans') works.

There is Daniel Deronda- a truly good man. A natural hero.

Silas Marner- a good man but one who turns his back on human relationships when he's hurt by the world. God saves Marner's soul by offering him a real treasure in the form of a precious child to love and raise.

Godfrey Cass- a bit of a cad but not a total rake like his brother Dunstan Cass was (Dunstan was the man who stole Silas' money). Godfrey was married albeit secretly to the woman he had impregnated (unlike Grandcourt in the story of Daniel Deronda). His real sin was more moral cowardice than outright villainy.

Henleigh Grandcourt- a total villain. A controlling and domineering individual whose sheer pleasure in life is to totally dominate and control and humiliate other people.

I'm sure we've all come across people like Daniel Deronda, Silas Marner, Godfrey Cass and Henleigh Grandcourt in our lives.

And George Eliot does an excellent job of capturing the essences of these heroes and villains we encounter along the road that is life.