Eliot's Angels: George Eliot, Rene Girard, and Mimetic Desire

Bernadette Waterman Ward's book explores George Eliot's work through the lens of René Girard's theories of mimetic desire, violence, and the sacred, revealing her understanding of imitative desire, rivalry, idol-making, and sacrificial victimization as critical elements of the social mechanism. It emphasizes the clash between mimetic desire and the idea of progress, Eliots Christian sympathy for sacrificial victims, and her resort to "Nemesis" to evade systemic injustice. The "angels" in the title are characters who appear to offer a humanist way forward in the absence of religious belief, but are ultimately rendered ineffectual.

Format: Hardback
Length: 420 pages
Publication date: 22 June 2022
Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press

René Girard's mimetic theory provides valuable insights into the interplay between George Eliot's progressive politics and her conservative moralism in her narratives. In her groundbreaking study, Bernadette Waterman Ward offers an original rereading of Eliot's work through the lens of Girard's theories of mimetic desire, violence, and the sacred. This fruitful mapping of a twentieth-century theorist onto a nineteenth-century novelist reveals Eliot's profound understanding of imitative desire, rivalry, idol-making, and sacrificial victimization as critical elements of the social mechanism. While the unresolved tensions between Eliot's realism and her desire for gradual social amelioration have been extensively studied, Ward excels in articulating the intricate details of these conflicts in Eliot's early novels.

In particular, Ward highlights the clash between the ruthless mechanisms of mimetic desire and the concept of progress, as Eliot expressed it, "growing good." She also emphasizes Eliot's Christian sympathy for sacrificial victims, despite her general rejection of Christianity, and her resort to "Nemesis" to confront the systemic injustice of the social sphere. The "angels" in the title symbolize characters who appear to offer a humanist way forward in the absence of religious belief. According to Girardian terms, they are figures who strive to imitate Christ's self-sacrifice but ultimately fail.

Eliot's Angels is a groundbreaking work that gives Eliot's short fiction its due recognition. It will appeal to scholars of mimetic and literary theory, Victorianists, and students of the novel alike. By exploring the complex interplay between Eliot's political beliefs and her literary works, Ward sheds new light on the enduring relevance of Girard's theories in understanding the complexities of human behavior and social dynamics.

Dimension: 229 x 152 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780268202644