The Feminine Element in "The Modern Spirit", within The Spectator, vol. 40, issue 2027

The Feminine Element in "The Modern Spirit", within The Spectator, vol. 40, issue 2027

Morley, John

London: The Spectator Limited, 1867. The Spectator, vol. 40, issue 2027, 1867-05-04. pp. 495-6

Internet Archive

1867

George Eliot to John Morley, 14 May 1867. “Your attitude in relation to Female enfranchisement seems to be very nearly mine. . . . I would certainly not oppose any plan which held out any reasonable promise of tending to establish as far as possible an equivalence of advantages for two sexes, as to education and the possibilities of free development. I fear you may have misunderstood something I said the other evening about nature. I meant to urge the ‘intention of Nature’ argument, which is to me a pitiable fallacy. I mean that as a fact of mere zoological evolution, woman seems to me to have the worse share in existence. But for that very reason I would the more contend that in the moral evolution we have ‘an art which does mend nature.’ It is the function of love in the largest sense, to mitigate the harshness of all fatalities. And in the thorough recognition of that worse share, I think there is a basis for a sublimer recognition in women and a more regenerating tenderness in man. However, I repeat that I do not trust very confidently to my own impressions on this subject. The peculiarities of my own lot have caused me to have idiosyncrasies rather than an average judgment. The one conviction on the matter which I hold with some tenacity is, that through all transitions the goal towards which we are proceeding is a more clearly discerned distinction of function (allowing always for exceptional cases of individual organization) with as near an approach to equivalence of good for woman and for man as can be secured by the effort of growing moral force to lighten the pressure of hard non-moral outward conditions. It is rather superfluous, perhaps injudicious, to plunge into such deeps as these in a hasty note, but it is difficult to resist the desire to botch imperfect talk with a little imperfect writing. The ‘Spectator’ article is a grandiose specimen of what a journalist can do when not ‘stating his thoughts in a manner below his capacity’ -- for misrepresentation and wriggling.” GEL 4: 364-5

Morley, John, The Feminine Element in "The Modern Spirit", within The Spectator, vol. 40, issue 2027, George Eliot's Reading, George Eliot Archive, edited by Beverley Park Rilett. https://GeorgeEliotArchive.org, Accessed September 7, 2026. https://georgeeliotarchive.org/items/show/57336

https://georgeeliotarchive.org/files/original/7555b2d1b2aef2b52b92a01bea5f7a8c.pdf