ZHAI Yong-li
　　Sichuan Agricultural University, Ya’an, China
　　Women’s suffering in George Eliot’s three major novels in part results from, on the one hand their consciousness of their futile struggling for something that is incompatible with the society, and on the other, their eventual renunciation of their original dreams. Generally speaking, no matter what overt images they assume, Madonna or madwoman, no matter which period they are in, no matter how hard they try, suffering more or less characterizes their normal living state and they generally have to face a doomed fate. However, Eliot is by no means a pessimist, and she will never let her heroines subject to their fate passively. In suffering, these heroines still believe in love and humanity. They keep their eyes on the misery of the world with great sympathy. They suffer for themselves, and more for others. Suffering is the source of their strength and their way to save the corrupted souls of their male counterparts. They put themselves on the cross of suffering, and in this process they eventually are elevated as Christ figures. Suffering, as Eliot has wished, serves as a baptism, a regeneration, and the initiation into a new state for the sufferers and also a salvation to the world.
　　Keywords: suffering, salvation, George Eliot, women
　　 Introduction
　　Victorians believed in the value of human suffering (Reed, 1975, p. 17). Bronte indicated in her Shirley(2008) that the world was viewed as a scene for trial and probation. James Hinton observed that “Man’s life is measured by his pains” (Reed, 1975, p. 17), in his work The Mystery of Pain: A Book for the Sorrowful (1866). Pain, for Hinton, is an essential part of moral development, which functions even at the day-to-day level. “A life which everything that has in it the element of pain is banished, becomes a life not worth having; or worse, of intolerable tedium and disgust” (Reed, 1975, p. 17). Pain, Hinton argues, must be transformed into sacrifice, and then it becomes noble. This notion was closely allied to the belief that true nobility and morality arose from renunciation. Carlyle has argued that men learn to place ideals above personal aim (Reed, 1975, p. 17). George Eliot of course concurs in the belief that self-renunciation was an important step in man’s moral growth and suffering accordingly was an awakening, because she not only puts her characters in moral dilemmas but, more importantly, points a way out for them to be morally noble: renunciation, the key to moral problems. Renunciation, more often than not, goes along with suffering. But to Eliot, suffering can be regarded as a rewarding and valuable experience sometimes; for example in Adam Bede (1997), she clearly announced that“Deep, unspeakable suffering may well be called a baptism, a regeneration, and the initiation into a new state”(p. 367). In fact in most of her works, suffering as a living state at least partly shows itself on most of her protagonists.
　　 Women’s Normal Living State: Suffering
　　Women’s fate is Eliot’s main concern in most of her works. Most of the women figures are “charged with suffering and sensibility” (Woolf, 1996, p. 81). Their suffering in part arises from, on the one hand their consciousness of their futile struggling for something that is incompatible with the society, and on the other, their eventual renunciation of their original dreams. Generally speaking, no matter which period they are in, suffering more or less characterizes their normal living state. Out of different moral purposes, however, some are choosing to suffer whereas some are chosen to suffer.
　　A Shallow Girl’s Suffering
　　As a young girl bereft of her parents and toiling every day in her uncle’s house, we cannot expect Hetty is happy though she is depicted as a vain and shallow girl in Adam Bede. What is more, she longs for getting into a higher social level by marrying the dandy Arthur, which is an impossible dream for a girl with her social status, and what is more, she must keep her impossible dream in secret. A young girl living with such mental burden can hardly be happy. Even if she does not seem to suffer a lot when she lives in Hayslope, her later miserable wandering on the wild catches her up. And as Barrett has put it:
　　Hetty’s suffering is the source of her strength in the novel. As in Dostoyevsky’s novels, the character who has sinned and suffered for those sins is elevated by suffering to a point where the non-sinner seems pale and dwarfish by comparison.(Barrett, 1989, p. 50)
　　In Hetty’s travails and anguish, suffering disjoins itself from the concepts of blame and punishment. In the“Journey in Despair”, Hetty is simply a living being in pain, and as such demands our sympathy: the extent to which she is blameworthy becomes irrelevant (Barrett, 1989, p. 50).
　　A Woman Preacher’s Suffering
　　Dinah Morris, another protagonist in Adam Bede, suffers in quite a different way from Hetty. As a traveling Methodist preacher who thinks “It has pleased God to fill my heart so full with the wants and suffering of his poor people” (Eliot, 1997, p. 29), Dinah is drawn to the poor and the suffering with love and sympathy. After learning the death of Adam’s father, she goes to give her comfort to the afflicted mother Lisbeth. Then Dinah says to Lisbeth:
　　God didn’t send me to you to make light of your sorrow, but to mourn with you, if you will let me. If you had a table spread for a feast, and was making merry with your friends, you would think it was kind to let me come and sit down and rejoice with you, because you’d think I should like to share those good things; but I should like better to share in your trouble and your labour. (Eliot, 1997, p. 94)
　　The above words may express Dinah’s understanding of suffering quite clear. Naturally, she gives up the comfortable life in her aunt Mrs. Poyster’s house and goes to the barren and poor Snowfield to carry “the word of life to the sinful and desolate” (Eliot, 1997, p. 409). In her own words, “It is needful” for her own soul that she“should go away from this life of ease and luxury” “lest the love of the creature should become like a mist in my soul shutting out the heavenly light” (Eliot, 1997, pp. 408-409). As a woman preacher, Dinah is not taken seriously by most of her contemporaries and even criticized by some in that at that time it is not proper for a woman to go out for a job. But after she steps into marriage, she finally retreats herself to a woman’s conventional position as a wife and a mother. Given Adam’s attitude to woman’s preaching, we have reason to believe that Dinah gives up her profession for Adam in part, and for another, she has to renounce her beloved profession because “Conference has forbid the women preaching” (Eliot, 1997, p. 463) as mentioned in the novel. Dinah’s seemingly happy ending in marriage cannot cloak the unhappy fact that by losing her profession, she is obliged to lose her independent identity in society. If we can say she suffers physically before marriage, she probably suffers spiritually after marriage for her renunciation.
　　Suffer for Heart’s Need
　　Maggie Tulliver may get the most anguishing suffering spiritually in all Eliot’s heroines. Since she is a little girl, she pains for the unavailable love from her brother Tom, for the undeserved scolding from her relatives and for the adults’ undue neglecting of her intellect. She also pains for her differences from others, for her yearning for knowledge, and for her great loneliness. The golden age of childhood of course leaves her a little glorious memory, but she still is a girl suffering a lot across the board. The bankruptcy of her father brings great pains on this girl. The stifling surroundings push Maggie into even greater misery. In isolation, the accidental discovery of a hymn book written by Thomas a Kemplis comes to her rescue. Maggie is greatly influenced by the teaching and strives “to be contented with that hardness, and to require nothing” (Eliot, 1995, p. 263). It is here Eliot comments that “It is the path of martyrdom and endurance, where the palm-branches grow, rather than the steep highway of tolerance, just allowance, and self-blame, where there are no leafy honours to be gathered and worn” (Eliot, 1995, p. 263). Though “that new inward life of hers, notwithstanding some volcanic upheavings of imprisoned passions, yet shone out in her face with a tender soft light that mingled itself as added loveliness with the gradually enriched colour and outline of her blossoming youth” (Eliot, 1995, p. 264), Maggie never gets the real peace in her heart and is suffering the pain of collisions between her inner world and the outer world now and then. The temporary serenity she gets through self-effacement is lost when Philip Wakem stirs up her desire for love and a fuller life. Philip’s intelligence, knowledge, and affection well meet her starving need for intellectual life. In response to Philip’s feelings, there rises again “her innate delight in admiration and love” (Eliot, 1995, p. 270). But the admiration and love given by Philip still cannot rescue Maggie from suffering on the one hand, from the threat of losing “the simplicity and clearness of her life” which she has partially achieved by self-denial and for another the sense of betraying and the fear of being disclosed of dating with the son of their family’s enemy. Finally, Tom’s rude interference ends up her friendship with Philip, though it serves as a comfort to her for a time. Again Eliot cannot help sighing:
　　And here she was down again in the thick of a hot strife with her own and others’ passions. Life was not so short, then and perfect rest was not so near as she had dreamed two years younger. There was more struggle for her—perhaps more falling. (Eliot, 1995, p. 312)
　　When Maggie meets with her cousin Lucy’s nearly affianced suitor Stephen, to whom she is strongly attracted, her painful struggle and suffering come again. For one thing, the soulful side of Maggie tries to resist the temptation of the man she is increasingly attached to; for another, the sensual side of her yearns for love, adoration, and comfort. “Contending that such feelings conflict with the ties that their former lives have made‘natural’ for each of them” (Pinion, 1981, p. 119), Maggie pleads with Stephen not to urge her further though she loves him. Yet her weakness persists; the erotic spell lulls her into thinking with Stephen that “They might still snatch moments of mute confession” (Eliot, 1995, p. 410) before parting; though the old voices reassert “all the memories of early striving” (Eliot, 1995, p. 410), “all the deep pity for another’s pain, which had nurtured in her through years of affection and hardship” (Eliot, 1995, p. 410), and “all the divine presentiment of something higher than mere personal enjoyment” (Eliot, 1995, p. 410), the lure of a life of ease and luxury makes her succumb to the opium of dreams, as she does in childhood when experience is unkind. The “enchanted haze”(Eliot, 1995, p. 415) leads to her seemingly elopement with Stephen. When she wakes she knows that she has blotted her life with irrevocable wrong, bringing sorrow into lives “knit up with hers by trust and love” (Eliot, 1995, p. 421). Though by marrying Stephen she can save herself most from the painful effect of false imputations, Maggie rejects Stephen’s proposal by replying that “I cannot marry you—I cannot take a good for myself that has been wrung out of their misery” (Eliot, 1995, p. 428). Despite the fact that returning to St. Ogg’ inevitably will bring her more rumors and shame, Maggie chooses to come back to experience the stingy pain in the harshest way she can have not for outer influences but rather for her desire to remain true to her own moral ideals. But she goes back home only to be driven away by her beloved brother Tom and insulted by the people in the town. When Stephen renews his plea by letter asking her to join him, Maggie feels again she is between the devil and the deep sea. In fact, all her short life is full of different sufferings and pains, and her eventual death with her brother in this way can be understood as a release from suffering.
　　Suffer for Misplaced Idealism
　　Dorothea’s suffering takes in a similar way with Maggie’s because of her similar passionate nature and similar hopelessly yearning for something high and beautiful, but her suffering lies not so much in the process of pursuing her Theresa-like dream than in her disillusionment after her efforts and her hopeless endurance of the stifled surroundings she is trapped in. In spite of her own aspirations, nothing in Dorothea’s life experience prepares her to take up any ardent public career. For the root of Dorothea’s dilemma, Thomas (1987) is reasonable when she commented like this:
　　Lacking the structured opportunities to discover a vocation, which men inherit with their sex, Dorothea’s energy endures, diffuse and unchannelled, but still charged, waiting for the opportunity to release itself, if not in active vocation, then in passionate devotion to a human being, most likely a man, who touches her heart and taps her idealism. (pp. 399-400)
　　Mr. Casaubon happens to be the first man on whom Dorothea deposits her hope for his erudition and ambition. The festinate marriage soon disappoints both of them. Instead of finding a mentor who can lead her into a fuller life, Dorothea “felt with a stifling depression, that the large vistas and wide fresh air which she had dreamed of finding in her husband’s mind were replaced by anterooms and winding passages which seemed to lead nowhither” (Eliot, 1993, p. 163). Dorothea has been becoming more and more aware, with a certain terror, that “Her mind was continually sliding into inward fits of anger or repulsion, or else into forlorn weariness” (Eliot, 1993, p. 163). However, Dorothea’s altruistic nature prevails so that she “could know nothing except through that medium: all her strength was scattered in fits of agitation, of struggle, of despondency, and then again in visions of more complete renunciation, transforming all hard conditions into duty” (Eliot, 1993, p. 165). She is always trying to be what her husband has wished, and expects appreciation for her submissive self-sacrifice; but to her disappointment, she is “never able to repose on his delight in what she is” (Eliot, 1993, p. 392). She longs for work “which will be directly beneficial like the sunshine and the rain” (Eliot, 1993, p. 392), only to realize that she is to “live more and more in a virtual tomb, where there was the apparatus of a ghastly labour producing what would never see the light” (Eliot, 1993, p. 392). Fortunately, the miserable marriage does not last long. Mr. Casaubon’s death releases Dorothea from the strain and conflict of self-repression, but puts her into another kind of pains. After her husband’s death, in the midst of her family’s opposition, she tries to exert herself to restore confidence and a sense of identify, but Celia’s revelation of the codicil and the contents shatters totally her sense of moving in a recognizable world, Dorothea is experiencing
　　the possibility of a radical disjunction between her present and past—the sudden and shocking realization that her husband has perceived her and her most tender efforts in a light which cheapens them—and is grappling with the consequent necessity to understand anew her most private, authentic experience. (Thomas, 1987, p. 397)
　　Dorothea, as Eliot (1993) hinted through Lydgate’s words, “was likely now to feel herself only in another sort of pinfold than that from which she had been released” (p. 406).
　　Casaubon’s codicil evokes Dorothea’s repulsion to her husband and ironically serves as a reminder for Dorothea to rethink her relation with Ladislaw. Their love of course is incompatible with the society because of the great gap between their social statuses. Nevertheless, after much painful struggle, Dorothea finally marries Ladislaw at the price of losing her wealth and her fame. Though she ends in a seemingly happy story, for many readers and critics, Dorothea’s fate represents a sacrifice only less sad than it might have been. We can hardly imagine that such a passionate and ambitious girl will willingly give up her dreams and give her wifely duty without any regret.
　　Summary
　　Generally speaking, whether they are Madonna or madwoman, women in Eliot’s fictions generally assume the similar fate pattern and are similarly suppressed and stifled by the given society; they inevitably suffer in the process of pursuing their dreams, struggling with the incompatible surroundings and renouncing their original aspirations.
　　 Significance of Women’s Suffering: Salvation
　　Eliot’s Salvation Consiousness
　　Although having abandoned all orthodox belief in her early 20s, Eliot was still greatly influenced by Christianity. As has been analyzed above, Madonna image is prevailing in her novels. Jesus prototype also can find its expression in many of her works. In Adam Bede, Eloit reexhibits the image of suffering Jesus through Dinah’s preaching. Eliot is also deeply influenced by Feuerbach’s Essence of Christianity (1881) which she has translated and by his interpretation of religion, Eliot once said, “with Feuerbach I everywhere agree” (Eliot, 1954, p. 153). To Feuerbach, the dogmas of Christianity are the projections of men’s feelings upon the outward world. Man’s consciousness of God is nothing other than his consciousness of his own species. Love for God is the incarnation of man’s love for man. Likewise, renunciation and suffering in Eliot’s novels are based on not love for God but for human beings. Most women in Eliot’s novels, especially the Madonna-like figures, suffer for the patriarchy suppression, for their own inner conflict and more importantly, just like the suffering Jesus, for the salvation of people around them.
　　Salvation Significance in Different Heroines’ Suffering
　　Hetty’s suffering may be seen as a punishment for her peacockery and her sexual delinquency. However, according to Barrett, the glorification of Hetty’s suffering can either be seen as a morbid worship of suffering for its own sake, conservative in that it reaffirms the slave-mentality values by which the ruling class buys off the less fortunate with myths of a posthumous redistribution of wealth, or it can be seen as a radical demand for change by highlighting the suffering of women and labourers at the hands of men and landowners (Barrett, 1989, p. 51). If it is the second case, Hetty becomes, as Myers (1984) pointed out, a Christ figure, an icon of extreme suffering with which readers can identify all their own lesser sufferings (p. 36). We actually can find some hints which may indicate Hetty as a Christ figure. During her journey, when Hetty finds that Arthur is no longer at Windsor, she faints, and is described as a “beautiful corpse” (Eliot, 1997, p. 324). According to Barrett (1989), this is the moment at which Hetty takes over as Christ figure, and her suffering provides such a rich background for the image (Christ’s significance, after all, lies in his suffering) that it seems, for the first time, to have found its true place (p. 51). In addition, it is through Hetty’s suffering, as we are informed in the epilogue of the novel, Arthur is greatly altered and he genuinely realizes that “There’s a sort of wrong that can never be made up for” (Eliot, 1997, p. 464).
　　If we say Hetty suffers passively, then Dinah’s suffering is what she chooses to endure. But as a Madonna image, at least before her marriage, Dinah suffers not for her own sake but for the poor and the needy. Through her own suffering, she brings sympathy and comfort to the needy. Therefore, if Dinah’s preference to a harder life will at least bring her much more physical suffering, she takes the suffering willingly. Dinah’s deeds remind us of Jesus in the Bible. Jesus spends his time almost all in doing good to poor people, preaches out of doors to them, makes friends of poor people and teaches them, and takes pains with them; therefore, Barrett (1989) is reasonable when she says “Dinah in Aadm Bede is obviously following Jesus’ model. She puts on the Cross of suffering for her people just like Jesus. She is an angel, a ghost, a risen Christ” (p. 42).
　　Similar to Dinah, as a Madonna figure, the salvation signification of Dorothea’s suffering goes without saying. Dorothea’s suffering before her first marriage lies in the slim chance that the society provides for an ardent girl. After her futile effort in improving the cottages in her uncle’s manor and other vain attempt, Dorothea marries Casaubon in order to find a guide who can lead her to a much more useful life. Unfortunately, instead of bringing what she desires, the marriage begins her long period of suffering. However, most of the time, her affliction is just because there is no channel to utilize her energy in a way beneficial to people around her. Blake(1996) has noticed its root pointedly:
　　Dorothea has only the meagerest work to acquit herself and the meagerest education to help her tread out her own path. Instead of being reinforced, her energy, which is greater than anyone else’s in the book, often fails of effect precisely because energy is not expected of a woman. (p. 394)
　　After being shut out of her own schemes and then later learning the fact that her husband’s project is worthless, it is only natural that Dorothea senses a kind of disillusionment and indefiniteness. Nevertheless, notwithstanding her own inner suffering, she tries herself to do her wifely duty and gives her husband due tender and care. Still, she even is ready to promise to go on with the work Mr. Casaubon leaves behind if he dies a few minutes earlier though she by no means is willing to accept it. At that time, she has virtually given up her own aspiration. Such self-effacing and renunciation of course can be seen as Dorothea’s yielding to the outside world, but also can be regarded as an expression of her “young and noble impulse” (Eliot, 1993, p. 688). The moment one suffers for others, he is elevated with spiritual enjoyment. Furthermore, as Eliot has pointed, “the effect of her[Dorothea] being around her was incalculably diffusive” (Eliot, 1993, p. 688). In this way, the corrupt world is saved in a mild yet noticeable way.
　　When we come to the case of Maggie Tulliver, it is not difficult for us to seek at least the following two reasons for her sufferings: the pursuing of her inner peace and the consideration of other people’s welfare. A convenient case in point is Maggie’s renunciation of Stephen. Through Dr. Kenn’s thinking, the author says that“Maggie’s heart and conscience” (Eliot, 1995, p. 445) make “the consent to the marriage [between Maggie and Stephen] a desecration to her” (Eliot, 1995, p. 445) and “her conscience must not be tempered with” (Eliot, 1995, p. 445); still, by her own sacrificing, Maggie means to fulfill Lucy and other people’s happiness. Therefore, though strongly tempted, finally “the words that were marked by the quiet hand in the little old book that she had long ago learned by heart” (Eliot, 1995, p. 461) rushes to her lips and find a vent for themselves in a low murmur,“I have received the Cross, I have received it from Thy hand; I will bear it, and bear it till death, as Thou hast laid it upon me” (Eliot, 1995, p. 461). Clearly, by uttering these words, Maggie herself has taken the cross of suffering just as the suffering Jesus. Maggie’ last behaviour in saving her brother Tom, according to Paul Yeoh, effectively enacts the legend of St. Ogg: She is both the humble boatman who risks her personal safety and challenges bravely the elements for the sake of the “heart’s need”, and also the transfigured Virgin, whose “almost miraculous divinely-protected effort” makes “an entirely new revelation to [Tom’s] spirit, of the depths in life, that had lain beyond his vision which he had fancied so keen and clear” (Yeoh, 2009, p. 11). By evoking a process of moral regeneration in Tom, Maggie’s practice of saintly altruism on this occasion serves as a salvation not only to herself but to her brother.
　　 Conclusions
　　Eliot, of course, attaches much importance to the value of suffering. Madonna or madwoman, women in Eliot’s novels observe similar fate pattern and suffer significantly in the process of struggling for their dreams and reconciling with the incompatible world, though with different endings. It is through suffering that many heroines acquire a kind of strength and halo that elevate them out of the depressed surroundings. Though most of the heroines suffer for others, and on the cross of suffering, most of them are spiritually exalted. Suffering, as Eliot has wished, serves as a baptism, a regeneration and the initiation into a new state for the sufferers and also a salvation to the corrupt world.
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