Scenes of Clerical Life by George Eliot

This is a collection of three novellas of varying length, all set in the same fictional area and concerning three clerical figures. The stories are very different: the first, The Sad Fortunes of the Reverand Amos Barton, concerns a rather weak curate and his family and the troubles they undergo with a small income and unfortunate friends. The next, Mr Gilfil's Love Story, is a story of a vicar, who was remembered fondly as someone 'who smoked very long pipes and preached very short sermons', telling the tale of his one love affair with his wife as a young man. The final story, Janet's Repentance, is quite a harrowing tale of a wife beaten regularly by her drunken lawyer husband who becomes an alcoholic herself but finds spiritual strength through the support of an evangelical minister.

All three are mixtures of amusing and charming scenes and hard social commentary. There are a number of moving episodes and all are fully developed in their own right. It is quite an extraordinary book. The first story was only 70 pages long but in that time made me care about the characters despite their shortcomings, laugh and cry, which is quite a feat.

The middle story is the lightest, and more of a romance than any other but is also very enjoyable. The final story was hard to read, with its scenes of domestic violence, and especially in the attitude of Janet towards her husband, as she still tried to love him even when he beat her and would not leave him despite the fear and misery she lived through.

None of the stories deal with particularly light subjects, but they are not depressing due to the way that Eliot weaves wit and gentler passages throughout, even when dealing with her most difficult subjects. At a point when Janet has been locked out of the house by her husband in her nightdress, the next day the scene of her servants discussing what could have happened to her and wondering whether she has been murdered is almost comic as the cook describes how she would act with such a husband. But it does not stray too far in this way and diminish the power of the horror Janet has gone through - it is not comic at the expense of the drama. The servants are portrayed as sympathetic to their mistress and understanding of why she drinks but hardened to the state of affairs in the household.

Although ostensibly about the male clerical figures, all of these stories are really about the women in these men's lives. The position of women in early nineteenth century society is shown clearly throughout the story, and not just in Janet's extreme case. In the first story the curate's friends that cause him problems are a brother and sister whom the local gossips have decided are, in reality, lovers pretending to be related, mainly because the woman is too glamourous for them to accept her version of her life. The second portrays a poor girl whose feelings are played with by the rich heir of the family she lives with as an amusing way for him to pass the time, while he intends to pursue an heiress for marriage. In Janet's case, although clearly the victim, the local people criticise her for drinking and her mother-in-law firmly blames Janet for her husband's actions because she was not a good household manager or a subservient enough wife in the early days of their marriage. There are also less important characters, such as the Misses Linnet in Janet's Repentance, both just past thirty and so considered useless old maids or in the first story where a poor unmarried niece of an old wealthy woman is forced to act as a companion to her elderly relative, is regularly demeaned and unknowlingly faced with the prospect of being cut out of her aunt's will. The opportunities for women in this society if they were above the servant class were limited to just one, to get married and have a successful life only through their husband. Society had a fixed idea of how a woman should behave and live her life, and the penalties, in terms of how they were treated by the community, if women did not live up to this are clear through the moving and real portrayals in this book.