After those first years in which little girls are petted like puppies and kittens, there comes a time when it seems less obvious what they can be good for, especially when, like Caterina, they give no particular promise of cleverness or beauty; and it is not surprising that in that uninteresting period there was no particular plan formed as to her future position. She could always help Mrs. Sharp, supposing she were fit for nothing else, as she grew up; but now, this rare gift of song endeared her to Lady Cheverel, who loved music above all things, and it associated her at once with the pleasures of the drawing-room. Insensibly she came to be regarded as one of the family, and the servants began to understand that Miss Sarti was to be a lady after all." The thing we look forward to often comes to pass, but never precisely in the way imagined to ourselves. Reverend Edgar Tryan – the recently appointed minister at the chapel of ease at Paddiford Common. He is young, but in poor health. Theologically, he is an evangelical. He explains to Janet Dempster that he entered the Church as a result of deep grief and remorse following the death of Lucy, a young woman whom he enticed to leave her home and then abandoned.

The culmination is reached in “Janet’s Repentance.” By this time your heart has been pummeled by the first two “scenes,” and you are ready for a happy ending. But Eliot, true to form, has created a real life heroine and hero. They struggle with their own “sins” and their purgatory is harrowing, but this final installment ends with a beautiful triumph of the soul. Although Scenes of Clerical Life is Eliot’s first fiction about religion, she had been thinking about religion for at least a decade prior to the publication of Scenes of Clerical Life. In 1846, she translated D. F. Strauss’s groundbreaking Das Leben Jesu (1835) as The Life of Jesus Christ Critically Examined; eight years later, she translated Ludwig Feuerbach’s Das Wesen des Christentums (1841; The Essence of Christianity, 1854). Both of these works, critical of the foundations of traditional Christianity, influenced Eliot’s portrait of the bankruptcy of traditional religion in Scenes of Clerical Life. If stable character is based upon a coherent view of the world, then the clergyman protagonists of Scenes of Clerical Life, living in English provincial society during the first half of the nineteenth century, are at risk. They all embody radical discontinuities in communities which are themselves seriously divided. These gaps are ultimately bridged not by religious faith in any orthodox sense but by faith redirected to certain human continuities. The cost, however, is high: new life only emerges from pain, suffering, and death. That final discontinuity has to be experienced in each case before coherence in character and community can be achieved. These are George Eliot's most theological stories, engaged as they are in questioning, displacing, and then recovering the language of biblical hermeneutics for her own humanistic purposes. If you do not want us to use your data for our or third parties you will have the opportunity to withhold your consent to this when you provide your details to us on the form on which we collect your data.

Dolin, Tim (2005). George Eliot: Authors in Context. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p.69. ISBN 9780192840479.

George Eliot’s writing style and narrative techniques in “Scenes of Clerical Life” are characterized by a deep understanding of human nature and a keen observation of social dynamics. Eliot’s prose is rich and descriptive, often using vivid imagery to create a sense of place and atmosphere. Her characters are complex and multi-dimensional, with their inner thoughts and emotions often revealed through their actions and dialogue. The book provides a vivid portrayal of the social and religious milieu of the Victorian era. Eliot’s characters are drawn from real life and reflect the various shades of human nature. The stories deal with themes such as love, marriage, faith, and morality, and offer a critique of the rigid social norms and conventions of the time. But in the first place, dear ladies, allow me to plead that gin-and-water, like obesity, or baldness, or the gout, does not exclude a vast amount of antecedent romance, any more than the neatly executed ‘fronts’ [false curls] which you may some day wear, will exclude your present possession of less expensive braids. Alas, alas! We poor mortals are often little better than wood-ashes – there is small sign of the sap, and the leafy freshness, and the bursting buds that were once there; but wherever we see wood-ashes, we know that all that early fullness of life must have been. When discussing the first story of Scenes of Clerical Life, ‘The Sad Fortunes of the Reverend Amos Barton’, I will not refrain from revealing aspects of the plot, although I will not discuss details of the most salient moments. For the last two stories, I will avoid spoilers when discussing their plots. This collection of three stories, about the lives and work of clergymen in and near the small English town of Milby, was George Eliot’s first fictional work. As the Penguin Classics cover notes, it may seem odd that she chose church life for her stories, since she had broken with orthodox Christian belief some time earlier. After reading scholarly analyses of the Gospels, George Eliot had become convinced that they were essentially mythological stories. And, the introductory essay by David Lodge explains, this loss of belief led her to a stance of bold freethinking; she refused to attend church and for a time adopted a tone of confident secular scorn toward defenses of Christian faith.

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The second story of Mr Gilfil is even better, though the ending plot twist is a bit "ehhh". The story's setup and structure is just flawless though, it's extremely easy to be pictured in your mind as a TV series.