Some Echoes of Hegel in Romola Given Eliots well-documented relationship to German Idealism via her readings of Feuerbach, it would

hardly be surprising to detect resonances of Hegelian philosophy in the beginning of Romola. Even as Eliot takes more distance from her subject-matter than Hegelembodying philosophical sentiments in characters voices or in the voice of her narratorshe sets the stage for a novel that will have Hegelian concerns at its core. As the novel opens, we are introduced to the spirit of a Florentine citizen. Eliots narrator is concerned not just with an individual mind here; the Florentine citizen is not a particular character but a representative one, the embodiment of a collective geist from a particular historical period. Eliots narrator informs us that this citizen is a man of the fifteenth century, who, as such, inherits its strange web of belief and unbelief; of Epicurean levity and fetichistic dread; of pedantic impossible ethics uttered by rote, and crude passions acted out with childish impulsiveness; of inclination towards a self-indulgent paganism, and inevitable subjection to that human conscience which, in the unrest of a new growth, was rilling the air with strange prophecies and presentiments. Like Hegel, Eliot here beyond Kantian Idealism even as it preserves its fundamental insight; although thoroughly historicist, (rather than formulaic or abstractly transcendental), Eliot is nevertheless concerned with what transcendent freedom can achieved through the use of self-conscious reason within an immanent historical frame. Here Eliots narrator does not just read history as an end in itself; she reads care to separate contingent custom from reflectively endorsed spirit. One notes here the careful discrimination between the accidentals of Fetichistic dread, Crude passions, and selfindulgent paganism, and the essentialthe essential which, for Eliot as for Hegel, finds an expression in human conscience. Other early passages in Romola speak to the concern Eliot shares with Hegel to depict the rational core of historically evolved structures of conscience. One structure of conscience important to Hegel of course is the public-spiritedness that comes through collective political participation. We see the grave, elderly goldsmith Cennini voice a distinctively Hegelian perspective as he berates a fellow Florentine for failing to discern the importance of a ceremonial procession. According to Cennini, the poet, Cei, despises the procession only because forgets that, the great bond of our Republic is expressing itself in ancient symbols, without which the vulgar would be conscious of nothing beyond their own petty wants of back and stomach, and never rise to the sense of community in religion and law.i Such a claim echoes Hegelian language almost directly. Of course, works like Phenomenology of Spirit and Philosophy of Right are, among other things, systematic attempts to distinguish what Cennini calls petty wants of back and stomach (or, in Hegels words, appetite, want, impulse and random desireii) from a nations historically evolved sense of community in religion and law (or, in Hegels words, the idea and the consciousness of what is reasonable in so far as it is developed in a peopleiii). Like Hegels Philosophy of Right, Romola does not portray religion and politics as the sole vehicles for the structuring of rational will. The novel also sees the sphere of the family as playing a crucial mediating role in shaping formless desire in accord with rational concept. Commenting on children observed in the Florentine streets, Eliots narrator actually echoes Hegels view of marriage almost directly; for the narrator, little children are still the symbol of

the eternal marriage between love and duty. Hegel, likewise, views children as the external embodiment of the fundamentally rational commitment of marriage. Because marriage and family life at their best involves the synthesis of particulars of passion with the universality of duty, they exemplify Hegels conception of positive freedomthe ability to view an obligation not as external constraint upon ones freedom, but as the means by which directionless impulse is given rational structure. Because the duties of marriage depend for Hegel upon the socializing of the whole individual existence in order to reconcile ones passions to a role or duty, it is a structure by which positive freedom is achieved (PR 163); in marriage, participants give up their natural and private personality to enter a unity, which may be regarded as a limitation, but, since in it they attain to a substantive self-consciousness, is really their liberation (PR 162). Even if Eliot does not describe her project as the enumeration of structures of positive freedom, these dialectical marriages of passion and duty are of fundamental interest in her novels. Again echoing Hegel, Eliot sees such structures of will manifesting themselves not only in Republican politics or in act of raising children, but also in the pursuit of a vocation. One recalls Hegels defense in the Philosophy of Right of the role of corporations, or trade guilds, as playing an essential role in civil society (positioned, for Hegel, between the family and the state). Hegel views the peers in ones profession to be vital in order to create a stable sites of recognition capable of fostering and encouraging the development of a sense of pride and dutythat sense of duty which distinguishes a shapeless will, ruled by contingent desires, from a will governed by a culturally formed sense of purpose.iv Notably, what Hegel defends only in the abstract Eliots novels depict in concrete form; one sees the conscientious self-direction motivated by a desire to live in a way becoming [ones] class Hegel supposes to be secured by participation in a corporation,v given life in Romola. This desire to maintain class honor in Hegel, becomes in Romola, Brattis self-important gravityvi that does not allow him to enjoy anything he has not won through hard bargainingvii; Nellos conviction of that a man can be transformed by a good shave; or Bardis commitment to forsake the vulgar pursuit of wealth in commerce in order that he might devote [himself] to collecting the precious remains of ancient art and wisdom.

In addition to a concern with historical structures of reason and the negative, aspirational aspects of consciousness,

**** The perspective of Eliots novel does not take its cue only from the Hegel of the Philosophy of Right, interested in the determinate manifestations of collective reason (as embodied in historically realized structures of the rational constitution, the customs of civil society, and the principles of Christian religion). One also notes the emphasis on the ascent of the individual consciousness of the young Hegel of the Phenomenology. Giottos half-completed marble inlaying and statued niches, seem, to the Romolas narrator, to be a prophetic symbol, telling

that human life must somehow and some time shape itself into accord with that pure aspiring beauty (cit). Here distinctively human life, like the Hegelian spirit of the Phenomenology, is viewed to be aspirational at its coreit is defined by its negativity, its ability to perfect itself through the labor of the concept, through the estrangement of the immediate in the light of universal reason.

Cenninis speech continues: There has been no great people without processions, and the man who thinks himself too wise to be moved by them to anything but contempt, is like the puddle that was proud of standing alone while the river rushed by. ii PR 37 iii PR 274, addition. iv It is in the corporation that a conscious and reflective ethical reality is first reached. The superintendence of the state is higher, it is true, and must be given an upper place; otherwise the corporation would be reduced to the level of a wretched club. But the corporation is not in its absolute nature a secret society, but rather the socializing of a trade, which without it would stand in isolation. It takes the trade up into a circle, in which it secures strength and honour (PR 255, addition) v If the individual is not a member of an authorized corporation, and no combination can be a corporation unless it is authorized, he has no class-honour. By limiting himself to the self-seeking side of trade and his own subsistence and enjoyments, he loses standing. He perhaps seeks, in that case, to obtain recognition by displaying his success in his trade; but his display ha s no limit, because he has no desire to live in a way becoming his class (PR 253, note). vi He was a grey-haired, broad-shouldered man, of the type which, in Tuscan phrase, is moulded with the fist and polished with the pickaxe; but the self-important gravity which had written itself out in the deep lines about his brow and mouth seemed intended to correct any contemptuous inferences from the hasty workmanship which Nature had bestowed on his exterior vii [in Brattis own words] Bratti Ferravecchi is not the man to steal. The cat couldnt eat her mouse if she didnt catch it alive, and Bratti couldnt relish gain if it had no taste of a bargain [in the words of Nello]: Our Bratti is not a common man. He has a theory, and lives up to it, which is more than I can say for any philosopher I have the honour of shaving Bratti means to extract the utmost possible amount of pleasure, that is to say, of hard bargaining, out of this life; winding it up with a bargain for the easiest possible passage through purgatory, by giving Holy Church his winnings when the game is over. He has had his will made to that effect on the cheapest terms a notary could be got for.