George Eliot and Music

This is a fascinating investigation of the influence of music on George Eliot, and how that influence permeates both her life and her writing. The focus is on three novels - The Mill on the Floss, Middlemarch and Daniel Deronda - but before that there is a brief musical biography. Or Gray asserts that hitherto the pervading presence of music in her work has been critically undervalued, that, in fact, music \u27arches over\u27 that work and \u27greatly illuminates her artistry.\u27 She praises the influence of the Brays in widening and deepening the young Marian Evans\u27s capacity for appreciation, so that \u27her sententiousness yielded to musical exuberance.\u27 Then she traces the expansive Geneva experience, and the quick acquisition of a piano when Marian lodged with Olapman. She went to Covent Garden regularly with Herbert Spencer. Music had become and continued to be \u27an integral part of her domestic life, and fundamental to her social relationships.\u2