George Eliot and the dramatic imagination

Abstract

Dramatic Imagination emerges as the vehicle by which George Eliot demonstrates her skills as a dramatist within the novel genre. Eliot's protagonists, particularly in Middlemarch and Daniel Deronda , process experience or speculate about future events in terms of dramatically structured scenes. Eliot employs three modes of dramatic imagination, ¿dramatic exchange,¿ ¿speculative drama,¿ and ¿allusional drama,¿ to complicate the private contemplations of her most sympathetic characters and to encourage the reader's active participation in the creative process. ¿Dramatic exchange,¿ a term that remedies a key omission in Dorrit Cohn's analysis of interior monologue, describes a form of internalized dialogue that becomes uniquely ¿dramatic¿ via references to religious allegory and in the uncharacteristic absence of the Eliot narrator. The ¿speculative drama¿ turns a character's dreamy vision of the future into a scene that informs the larger themes of the text. Will Ladislaw's speculative drama in Middlemarch exposes his impractical optimism and his inclination to imagine life in terms of dramatic sub-genres. Ladislaw's response to disappointment parallels Eliot's pragmatic return to the novel after Armgart ; this connection to the author, conveyed through dramatic imagination, evokes sympathy for Ladislaw and redeems him as a worthy companion for Dorothea. The speculative dramas in Daniel Deronda , Eliot's last major work, reflect the cosmopolitan aspects of the novel. As the characters move within a fast-paced society characterized by mobility and social distraction, the speculative dramas are, at best, random vignettes. ¿Allusional drama¿ occurs when, in the course of introspection, Eliot's character draws upon a past drama to make sense of experience. In Middlemarch , Dorothea defines her loss of Will Ladislaw in terms of an allusion to the grieving mother in the Solomon story; she rewrites the original text, positioning herself in the role that more closely reflects the experiences of ¿the other woman.¿ Dorothea's revisionist imagination leads to empathy and to a selfless response. Similarly, Daniel Deronda contemplates his response to Jewish nationalism with an allusional drama. His response, to proceed with cautious pragmatism, continues the theme of modernity previously established.