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Old Values in a New World: Faith and Fortune in George Eliot’s Romola
Winner, Upper Undergraduate Humanities
Author: Alex Baker
George Eliot’s writings are quintessentially Victorian, adeptly weaving symbolism, characters, and social commentary into cohesive narratives. Arguably, George Eliot’s most accomplished work is her historical novel Romola (serialized in Cornhill Magazine 1862-3), a tale that, on account of its stringent research and attention to detail, successfully immerses readers into Renaissance Florence. Eliot portrays a complex, fictitious story unfolding concurrent to true events, enhancing historical verisimilitude through precise and careful employment of real-life places and personages. Eliot’s representation of setting and psychologically-genuine actors makes her narrative not just historically immersive, but aesthetically captivating. This fascination draws in readers, encouraging contemplation of Romola’s most important dimension, its didacticism. Although Eliot’s novel ostensibly focuses on the tumult of the old world, encapsulated by the neo-classical Florentine Republic, it is equally an observation on the novelist’s contemporary society. Apart from historical fiction, Romola is an ethical commentary on Victorian England, a nation caught between faith in traditional moral and social ideals, and faith in material fortune. Eliot, through Romola, recommends that the past’s morality be improved upon, not rejected.
Suzy Anger observes that George Eliot novels tend to “rely heavily” on a “moral struggle between altruism and egoism” (Anger 81). In keeping with Eliot’s predilections, Romola’s main characters, Romola de’ Bardi and Tito Melema, although endowed with complexity making them more than one-dimensional, nevertheless embody these two conflicting perspectives: outlooks that the author construes as pertinent, not just to Renaissance Florence, but also to Victorian England. Eliot’s title character is a moral reformer who, directed by sympathy and belief, salvages applicable value from traditional institutions and ideals. Romola’s husband Tito, on the other hand, signifies self-serving materialism, a prevalent Victorian attitude that Eliot perceives as damaging to society. Tito’s avaricious conduct functions as a warning against unfettered consumerism. A pivotal exchange late in Romola appropriately demonstrates the gulf between altruism and egoism: an exasperated Romola bemoans to her husband Tito, “I have no belief in you,” to which the latter rebukes, “I will take care of myself” (Eliot 405).
According to Suzanne Graver, Eliot stresses that the “traditional” community’s moral foundation (consisting in “people living for generations in a given place” and “regulating their lives according to set customs and beliefs”), must be amended in response to increasing social mobility causing the interconnecting “patterns” of community to “fragment and disintegrate” (Graver 2). Eliot’s writings advocate that the community’s traditional “concrete attributes,” such as “genealogy, locality and custom,” be deemphasized in favor of more abstract elements, primarily “affective ties” (Graver 2). This argument for social reform is traceable in the development of Eliot’s protagonist. Romola is a pure-hearted, altruistic person who initially exhibits the passivity expected of a Renaissance-era woman, assisting her father Bardo to reach books, kneeling by the antiquarian to aid in his reading, and making notes at his request (Eliot 49-51). She progressively develops agency, however, as she acclimates to an increasingly-chaotic Florence, which, over the course of the novel, becomes embroiled in the Italian Wars due to its expulsion of the Medici family and establishment of a Republican government. Never losing her virtues, but on the contrary, coming to realize her own strength of self, Romola adapts to life’s cruel vicissitudes and becomes a force for positive change. Eliot’s protagonist learns that, in order to help others, she must not place faith in authority, but in herself. She first allows herself to “be guided” before ultimately attaining the wisdom to guide others (Eliot 362).
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| "The Blind Scholar and his daughter" - Frederic Leighton (public domain) |
Romola’s personal growth begins when she places her faith in authority, and this blind faith makes her susceptible to dangerous new attitudes. Romola is, at first, abidingly loyal to her father Bardo, a man who, the antithesis of Tito, professes to value “wisdom” over the “pursuit of wealth” (Eliot 53). However, Bardo, despite praising his daughter as “endowed beyond the measure of women” (Eliot 69) possesses a hubristic desire for a “young [male] mind” (Eliot 52) to replace the son who abandoned him. This desire, coupled with Romola’s willingness to please her father, and her belief in the inherent goodness of people (e.g. early in her marriage she charitably rationalizes that Tito is “kinder than” her) allows an opportunist to disrupt the Bardi family’s traditional structure (Eliot 244). Romola’s loyalty to her father, and her acquiescence to his wishes (telling Bardo she “love[s] Tito” and wishes “to marry him that we may both be your children”) leads her into a loveless union that challenges her previously resolute faith in authority (Eliot 128).
Tito’s moral failings drive Romola, quite justifiably, toward resentment and hatred of her husband. Tito’s true nature is exposed when he sells Bardo’s library, the culmination of Bardo’s “lifelong ambition” and, in Romola’s eyes, her marriage’s “sacramental obligation” (Eliot 245). The transaction is an unacceptable betrayal, as, although Bardo is a naïve paternal figure (his literal blindness hinting at an inability to discern moral character), he is nevertheless dear to Romola. To accentuate Romola’s virtue, Eliot, an ethical objectivist who believes “there is no escaping the consequences of one’s actions,” portrays Tito as making the morally incorrect decision (Anger 79-80). Tito’s capitalist “transfer” of Bardo’s books to maximize their “use and value” directly contradicts Romola’s ideals, and the irrevocable loss of Romola’s affection is the first of Tito’s many punishments (Eliot 284). Romola, as opposed to withdrawing from her loss, steels herself to the disillusionment, watching as “the contents of [Bardo’s] library” are “carried away” (Eliot 315).
Having “lost belief in the [domestic] happiness” that, due to her father’s encouragement, “she had once thirsted for,” Romola attempts to escape Florence (Eliot 316). She is waylaid, however, by another authority figure, Girolamo Savonarola. This real historical figure, aside from accentuating the novel’s authenticity, is critical to Romola’s moral evolution. Savonarola offers what Kelly Battles aptly construes as a “third way”: the charismatic Dominican Friar appeals to Romola’s sense of civic duty as a compromise between Bardo’s impractical optimism and Tito’s naked greed (Battles 229). Demonstrating development of character, Romola embraces this civic path (including a loveless marriage) in service of the greater good. Again, however, she becomes disillusioned upon realizing that the authority Savonarola represents is lacking in integrity. Aware of her new mentor’s hypocrisy, Romola reproaches Savonarola, telling him that she does “not believe” his will is in accordance with “God’s kingdom” (Eliot 492). Making a crucial leap of faith, and opposed to being a political servant, she chooses to “stand outside” in order to be with “the beings that [she] love[s]” (Eliot 492).
Romola’s evolution is fully manifested by the time of “Romola’s Waking,” a chapter that by no coincidence immediately follows the destruction of constraining figures from her past (Tito being slain by the incarnation of his own “hideous past,” and Savonarola tortured into a damning confession; Eliot 548). Tito, the antithesis of a Christian moral agent, comes from over the sea and morally corrupts, yet through Romola’s conduct, Eliot stresses that innovation need not be associated with destruction. Romola also comes from “over the sea,” but she prioritizes the needs of others, aiding families in a plague stricken village, irrespective of their Jewish faith (Eliot 554). Her empathy points toward secular reformation of Christianity, an alternative approach in a world where traditional moral values have been upended. Ministering to the sick, “pitcher in hand” beside a well, Romola unmistakably echoes The New Testament’s depiction of Christ at Jacob’s well (Eliot 554). Christ, promulgating a new interpretation of an old tradition, dispenses water to a needful Samaritan woman from the same well associated with the prophet Jacob, in the process overturning The Old Testament’s prejudices against the Samaritan woman’s supposed sins (e.g. promiscuity: the Samaritan woman had “five husbands”; John 4:1-40). Like Christ, Romola is a “Blessed” figure who spreads a new covenant of human compassion to the masses (Eliot 559).
According to Anger, “Eliot’s fundamental moral principle” is that “sympathy” is a “necessary condition for a moral agent” (Anger 80). Having achieved moral agency through sympathy, Romola stoically bears witness to her Godfather, Bernardo del Nero’s, death, commenting “I am ready” (Eliot 499) in a parallel to Christ’s statement “[i]t is finished” (John 19:30). She likewise refuses to “cover [her] eyes” when Savonarola is burned at the stake (Eliot 578). Romola’s development concludes with her as an “independent woman, the head of her household,” and as a community leader, guiding the future generation’s development (Hodgson 96). Her growth is allegorical; just as Romola gradually refines value from tradition and authority (for instance, admiring how Savonarola, although flawed, nevertheless struggled “against powerful wrong”), Eliot suggests that in order to persevere, Victorian society needs to embrace a reformed, secular understanding of the ethics latent in tradition (Eliot 582).
Significantly, Romola is directly affected by the social and political changes in Florence (e.g. the execution of pro-Medicean conspirators includes Romola’s own Godfather, del Nero) and she successfully adapts in response to the city’s tumult, making her an avatar of the community’s spirit (Eliot 498-9). By the novel’s end, she embodies Eliot’s ideal Victorian citizen: an active and adaptable member of the community, who exhibits sympathy and acts for the good of others, yet who is far from submissive. Critically, Romola’s domesticity, both when she chooses to “fulfill the duties” of her state and remain with Tito, and later when she chooses to raise Tito’s children, is voluntary (Eliot 362). Eliot, an author who believes that Christianity’s “unreliable historical basis” reduces “its ethical force” to Christ’s moral teachings (Fleishman 29), endeavors to establish that voluntary family life is a secular act of self-sacrifice analogous to Christ’s assumption of the cross, a message Savonarola articulates when he informs Romola that, “if the cross comes to [her] as a wife,” then she “must carry it as a wife” (Eliot 362). Romola’s chosen role as educator for future Florentines makes her, as opposed to a servant of the community, the community’s foundation and, in a sense, its leading light. This is indicated by her very name, “Romola,” being the feminine version of “Romolo,” the Italian equivalent of Rome’s mythological founder, Romulus (Hodgson 87).
In stark contrast to Romola, who learns and grows over the course of Eliot’s narrative, Tito Melema is a static character, persistently ambitious until his demise. Romola’s husband and ethical foil, Tito is the novel’s antagonist: a handsome, yet morally-hollow, effervescent, yet duplicitous individual. Although occasionally contemplating the moral course of action, he never acts upon such compunctions. Instead, Tito acts (behavior for Eliot being a key indicator of morality) as a man of fortune, neglecting the “truth” in favor of “ingenuity” and “dissimulation” (Eliot 223). Befitting his deceptive nature, Tito spends the majority of his time at Nello’s Barbershop, a place of gossip, machismo, and façade. Rather than learning from (and improving upon) paternal figures, he rejects them entirely, to disastrous effect. Peggy Johnstone argues that Tito’s behavior is indicative of “pathological narcissism” (Johnstone 225). “[D]efficient” in “genuine feelings” (e.g. “appreciation, love, guilt”), his attempts to manipulate destiny are unbound from any kind of moral system (Johnstone 226). Eliot’s depiction of Tito as both covetous and morally lacking is significant, as through Romola’s husband, she unmistakably connects materialism to immorality.
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| "Suppose you let me look at myself" - Frederic Leighton (public domain) |
Tito embraces the Renaissance concept “fortune” (a forerunner to Victorian consumerism), which is facetiously explicated by Florentine thinker (and character in Eliot’s novel), Niccolò Machiavelli, as “a woman” that, “in order to [be kept] down,” must be “beat” and “struggle[ed] with” (Machiavelli 162). Tito endeavors to reduce his wife “to passiveness” (Eliot 285) and thus uncannily embodies the doctrines promoted by The Prince, Machiavelli’s treatise arguing that the “ends justify the means” (Bondanella and Musa 18). However, as Machiavelli scholars Peter Bondanella and Mark Musa note, in Machiavelli’s Discourses on Livy, he “condemn[s]” the very “scandalous moral attributes” he praises in The Prince, making it likely that The Prince’s espoused “ethics” are, as Eliot’s own depiction of Machiavelli suggests, spurious (Bondanella and Musa 22). Machiavelli’s infamous dissertation is, in fact, probably a pro-Republican satire against the Medicis, who were responsible for Machiavelli’s own imprisonment, torture, and isolation from politics. This makes Machiavelli’s interactions with Tito throughout Romola decidedly ironic; Machiavelli, in spite of his dissimulation, is nevertheless a politician dedicated to serving Florence, and therefore possesses a depth of personality that Tito, who serves only himself, lacks. If Machiavelli assumes, as Eliot puts it, the guise of “Satan,” then Tito, who embraces The Prince without a shred of irony, personifies the devil himself (Eliot 495). Tito’s Mephistophelian nature accentuates the waywardness of the path he chooses. Rejecting morals in favor of fortune does not afford Tito “immunity”; on the contrary, it spells his doom (Eliot 181).Tito is predominantly concerned with fortune, willing to exchange the sentimental and destroy relationships in order to ascend in prosperity. His fixation on profit and possession, likening his very wife to “furniture” that he is “master of” (Eliot 276, 405), reflects the consumer culture of a Victorian market, where everything is “for sale” and “everything [can] be bought” (Gurney 388). Romola, out of obligation and sympathy, attempts to preserve her father’s legacy, whereas Tito the proto-capitalist opportunistically rejects not only his step-father Bardo, but also his adopted paternal figure Baldassarre, despite being the “centre of Baldassarre’s fatherly cares” (Eliot 99). Opposed to extracting wisdom from authority, he attempts to “extract the utmost sum of pleasure” from Bardo and Baldassarre’s valuables (Eliot 115). One of Tito’s acquisitions is the weighty suit of armor he commissions to shield his bodily form, ominously described as “like carrying fear about” (Eliot 241). It is telling that, at roughly the same time Romola cultivates empathy by witnessing the “wild misery” of others, her husband, to avoid suffering, morally damns himself through procurement of a “[g]arment of fear” (Eliot 225, 236). Although the armor provides Tito external protection, it is acquired from ill-gotten florins, and accordingly comes at the additional cost of his soul. In keeping with Eliot’s moral determinism, Tito’s hastening across the “Ponte Rubaconte” after his purchase is a point of no return suggestive of Caesar’s opportunistic crossing of the Rubicon (Eliot 241).
George Eliot is a determinist, but, influenced by the German philosopher Immanuel Kant, she believes that “one can transcend circumstance” and be moral in a world of cause and effect through recognition that the consequences of our actions are “irrevocable and invariable” (Newton 442). Whereas Romola recognizes that actions have profound consequences, and therefore chooses to be a force for good, Tito’s “unconquerable aversion to anything unpleasant” leads him to commit depraved acts, effectively causing unpleasantness to seep into him (Eliot 109). He refuses to recognize the wickedness of his actions, justifying instead that his behavior is rational, but as Newton points out, Tito merely uses “rationality to justify actions that reflect [his own selfish] inclinations” (Newton 455). Tito’s reluctance to recognize his role as a moral agent progressively hinders him, and ultimately guarantees “calamity” (Eliot 583). Neglecting the well-being of others, Tito’s life is eventually extinguished by the very figure meant to bequeath it, smothered by his one-time father in a twisted inversion of the paternal dynamic. Battles is correct, however, to observe that, as “[s]ickness, hardship, and amnesia” diminish “Baldassarre’s powers of personal agency” (Battles 228), it is not an agent, but rather the cumulative “cold weight” of Tito’s transgressions that precipitate his demise (Eliot 252). As Savonarola says, “you cannot” escape truth; “[e]ither… it will lead you,” or “it will hang on you with the weight of a chain” (Eliot 356).
Tito’s arrival at Florence in 1492 is portentous, as it coincides with Christopher Columbus’ discovery of the Americas. Similar to Columbus, Tito is a new figure in an old world, his self-serving nature positioning him as a herald of doctrines prevalent to the Victorian period, such as greed, commodification, and selfishness, that Eliot finds contemptible. Worth noting, the “new” world’s discovery impacted Eliot’s own life substantially. Columbus’ voyage ultimately paved the way for the lucrative transatlantic trade that enriched England’s productive system, a process that in turn kick-started the Industrial Revolution which dominated Eliot’s Victorian society (Petley 145). Emphasizing Eliot’s argument for social reform, the date which signifies Renaissance Florence’s moral corruption in the novel is the same date to which the moral undermining of Victorian England can be attributed. Eliot conveys her disapproval with England’s obsession over “products and markets created by the rise of colonial trade” through Tito’s character arc (Petley 145). He climbs the ladder of fortune off of the backs of others, only to suffer a terrible cost when the rungs collapse beneath him. His horrifying fate, through which Eliot implies that Tito will behold Baldassarre’s gloomy countenance “hanging over him forever,” is the unsavory lot of a man obsessed with greed (Eliot 548).
Another historical Florentine appearing in Romola is the painter Piero di Cosimo, who plays a pivotal role in Eliot’s text as moral arbiter. Cosimo’s appearance is significant, as his ability to perceive moral character emphasizes Eliot’s own belief that an artist can convey moral truths, conveyance of moral truth being Romola’s precise purpose. Cosimo, as an artist, is able to accurately distinguish the emptiness underneath Tito’s handsome visage, and accordingly, he chooses to depict the outsider as Bacchus, a deity associated with material pleasure and debauchery (Eliot 183). Later, Cosimo contemptuously remarks that Tito makes a “good model for a coward” (Eliot 257). Conversely, the artist instinctively recognizes Romola as a virtuous person, addressing her as “Madonna” (thereby likening her to the Virgin Mary; Eliot 254). Cosimo selects Romola as the model for his painting of Ariadne, a Cretan princess who is ultimately abandoned by the lover in whom she placed her faith (mirroring Romola’s own gradual disillusionment with her husband; Eliot 183). Cosimo’s interactions with Tito and Romola accentuate their moral temperaments, his presence in Romola thus serving as a testament to Eliot’s ability to seamlessly weave together allegory, narrative, and history.
Though Eliot’s text conveys her message without any assistance, as per Victorian standards, Romola was accompanied by illustrations. Two of Sir Fredrick Leighton’s commissioned images are particularly worth consideration, as they again demonstrate Romola and Tito’s embodiment of the contrasting attitudes of altruism and egoism. In “The Blind Scholar and his Daughter” Romola dutifully assists another. Like the lamp she holds aloft to aid her father, she is presented as illuminative, a shining paragon of virtue. Leighton’s depiction of Romola with lamp in hand is suggestive of an individual renowned to the Victorians, Florence Nightingale. Nightingale, the “lady with the lamp” who, during the Crimean War (1853-6), pioneered modern nursing, was for the Victorians “a moral exemplar” (Zinner 420). Romola’s role as social reformer is thus further emphasized through association with one of Victorian England’s most ubiquitous social reformers, an individual who, like Romola, “redefines what is possible” for women (Zinner 416). Paralleling Leighton’s “The Blind Scholar” is his “Suppose you let me look at Myself,” a depiction of Tito at Nello’s Barbershop. In this image, Tito revealingly acts the part of Narcissus: unlike Romola who assists another, Tito is so captivated by his reflection that he pushes his barber aside. His self-obsession distinctly contrasts Romola’s selflessness. Aside from mental disparity, the very physical poses of Romola and her husband mirror one another, suggesting that they epitomize opposite halves of human nature.
The writings of George Eliot are preoccupied with the community’s ethical rediscovery in the face of pronounced change (Graver 3). Her masterwork of historical fiction, similar to how Christ, in the synoptic gospels, emphasizes that “no one puts new wine into old wine skins,” (Luke 5:37) stresses that old values are incompatible with the demands of a modern society. Although, like Christ, Eliot believes that “[t]he old is good,” (Luke 5:39) she also recognizes that the old requires amelioration. Eliot’s Romola consequently impresses upon readers that it is necessary to embrace the essential values latent in tradition, such as sympathy and compassion, to reform a world unhealthily obsessed with greed. Romola also starkly warns against material obsession, arguing through Tito Melema’s folly that the suppression of empathy in favor of fortune is an inherently ruinous path.
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