The Nibbling of a Mouse: Eliot's Saccharissa Letters in the Context of Bodichon's Call for Political Engagement

Abstract George Eliot's Saccharissa Letters, entitled Futile Falsehoods and Modern Housekeeping, her only works written with a distinctively female persona. Previously read as an approving comment on mediocre by women, these letters ironic, and the publications on political economy by Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon, Eliot's best friend, provide some of the discursive context for reading Eliot's ironic criticism of a simplistic and self-interested approach to political economy. The Saccharissa Letters important because they show Eliot's concern with political involvement and her frustration with women who abdicate social and political responsibility through adherence to a doctrine of separate spheres. They also emphasize Eliot's distance from her characters, even in works with a single speaker. ********** Because some of George Eliot's shorter periodical publications have been anthologized, they have had a large influence on the interpretation of her novels. In contrast, however, Futile Falsehoods and Modern Housekeeping, letters published in the Pall Mall Gazette in 1865, have been largely confined to obscurity. These two letters written under the pen name Saccharissa, which is significant because this is Eliot's only distinctively female persona. (1) Kathleen McCormack republished these two letters in 1990 with an accompanying article in which she argues that the letters are an approving portrayal of a woman in the very act of writing (41). They are, however, far from a simple approving comment on mediocre women's that indicates, as McCormack contends, a change in Eliot's opinion from her earlier essay on Silly Novels by Lady Novelists. Instead, these letters provide an ironic comment on the narrow concerns of women in the leisure class, and their lack of interest in issues of political economy. Saccharissa is witty in her observations on cant and waste in society, but her observations exactly what she claims for them: they the nibbling of a mouse (Futile Falsehoods 2). This ironic portrayal of Saccharissa does not indicate Eliot's lack of sympathy with the women's movement, but rather her frustration that many women found so little of consequence with which to concern themselves, a position Eliot shared with her intimate friend Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon, one of the key feminist leaders of the nineteenth century. (2) Bodichon's publications can provide key intertexts for understanding Eliot's work. The relationship between Eliot and Bodichon has often been ignored by critics who instead focus on male thinkers whose ideas Eliot supposedly propounds through her novels. (3) Eliot's and Bodichon's friendship, however, was very close. For example, when Bodichon first read reviews of Adam Bede, before she even got the book, she instinctively recognized Eliot as the author (Letters 3: 56-57), likely because the concerns of the novel were ones they had discussed together. Evidence of their continuing intellectual closeness is further seen in a letter Eliot wrote in 1878 to Bodichon who, because of paralysis, was unable to be in London: miss so much the hope I used to have of seeing you in London and talking over everything, just as we used to do--in the way that will never come exactly with anyone else (Letters 7: 70-71). Their emotional rapport is evident in that Bodichon was the first person to whom Eliot wrote after Lewes' death. Although some of Eliot's correspondence with Bodichon has survived, much seems to have been deliberately destroyed. For instance, Bodichon wrote Eliot a letter supporting her in her decision to live with George Henry Lewes outside a legal marriage, and Eliot passed this correspondence on to Sara Hennell: send you a letter which I have had from Barbara Smith. I think you will like to see such a manifestation of her strong noble nature. Burn when you have read it (Letters 2:211). Since we do not possess the full content of their ongoing discussion of ideas, Bodichon's political writings provide some of the discursive context important for understanding the irony of Eliot's Saccharissa letters. …