GEORGE ELIOT'S LAST STAND: IMPRESSIONS OF THEOPHRASTUS SUCH

Abstract

Let's face it:Impressionsof Theophrastus Such can be a pretty dreary book. It's all too easy to put it down, especially if you happen to be in the middle of a particularly heavy-handed passage in “The Watch-Dog of Knowledge” or “Debasing the Moral Currency.” Some early readers felt that the real George Eliot had abandoned them in her final publication by ceasing to write fiction, while recent critics have gone to some lengths to show that the narrator, allegedly a minimally published bachelor named Theophrastus Such, is a self-reflexive fictional character whose failings and contradictions are the real subject of the book.1 Who is Theophrastus Such? What is his ethical, political, or scientific orientation? How does his character emerge during the course of the volume? These are questions that have occupied recent critical dialogue. In response, I find myself harboring some sympathy for George Saintsbury, who reviewed Impressions in the Academy of 28 June 1879: . . .we feel that there is either too much or too little of Mr Such. The essayist who wishes to utter his opinions through the mouth of a feigned personage must give him at least something of a body for our thoughts to take hold of. Mr Such is little more than a disembodied shadow with a name attached to it, and this being the case we feel that we could do without his shadow and his name altogether. (qtd. in Hutchinson 429–30)