Middlemarch: Critical Reception, 1871-1891

        The general novel-reading public will probably care but little for it.
        Athenaeum, Dec. 7, 1872

        Contemporary criticism of great works is apt to prove unsatisfactory.
        The Academy, Jan. 1, 1873

        1871-1880
        • George Eliot's Style
        • Serial Form of Publication
        • Characters in Middlemarch
        • Ambivalence
        		 1881-1891
        • George Eliot's Religion
        • Characterization in Middlemarch
        • Problems with Plot
        Overview: 1871-1880 Contemporary reaction to George Eliot's Middlemarch, published serially from 1871-2, ranged from gushing and unmitigated praise to fault-finding of the most carping kind. Most critics during the first ten years after its publication fell somewhere in-between, expressing an ambivalence about the novel that vacillated between profound admiration for what she accomplished in this "study," and pointed illustration of the novel's stylistic faults. Although each critic had his own favorite characters and moments in the novel, most of them addressed four major points: Eliot's strained and overly scientific style, the serial form of the novel's original publication (over which there was a wide disparity of opinion), the individual characters themselves, and the general ambivalence about the novel as a whole. These are the issues that will be addressed here. For further indications of critical thought on Middlemarch, please see the Annotated Bibliography.

        Overview: 1881-1891

            George Eliot is dead. She rests where the memory of the mystic, contemplative Coleridge lingers still, in Highgate Cemetary. But the earth that lies upon her is counted profane, and she was buried without Christian burial.... However the spirit be quenched, this rare woman will not rest in a tomb unvisited, like the tomb of that Dorothea, writing whose story George Eliot so mournfully wept over her own.
            - Dublin Review, February 1881

        George Eliot's death on December 22, 1880, precipitated a deluge of commentaries on her life and works, and Middlemarch received its share of the critical attention. A wave of memorials tried to capture, to celebrate, and to issue the final word on Eliot's genius; both short articles and critical biographies attempted to unify her work, often looking to Middlemarch to exemplify her strengths. Critics praised her high sense of morality and used it to resolve uncertainties about her religious stance. They also wrote about Eliot's vivid characterizations, and touted her accurate depictions of rural communities. Although some found that the novelistic limits of Middlemarch frustrated both Eliot's plot and the possibilities of her characters, the vast majority of critics publishing in the 1880's recognized the novel's importance and were eager to award it and its author a high place in the literary canon.

        1871-1880

        George Eliot's Style:
        In A Literature of Their Own Elaine Showalter (1) writes that "Nothing was felt to be so shameful and humiliating or was so gleefully rebuked by critics, as intellectual pretension" in female writers. Eliot was recognized as a leading intellectual, but the critics still did not like to see such learning touted in the novel, especially scientific rather than philosophical learning. A critic from Nation pointed out that her scientific metaphors were probably beyond the scope of the average reader, toward whom the novel was supposed to be directed.

          No doubt a time may come when the progress of knowledge will make metaphors drawn from physical science really natural as appropriate illustrations, but to such a stage of knowledge the mass of so-called educated readers have certainly as yet not attained (Jan. 30, 1873).
        Critics described Eliot's intellectual ability as "excessive" and "morbid," writing that the book would benefit from more reserve on her part (Spectator, Mar. 30, 1872). The various scientific and medical metaphors Eliot used in Middlemarch were taken as a general example of the novel's stylistic fault: the book was overdone. The Athenaeum called them "tricks of style," (Dec. 2, 1871) which Eliot should have known to avoid. The metaphors are
          far-fetched, somewhat strained, and drawn by force from the most recondite arcana of chemistry and zoology, are apt, if indulged in, to degenerate into mannerism. We do not remember such in "Romola"; but "Middlemarch" is full of them. They choke the mechanism of the English, and they interrupt the thought.
        (The Athenaeum critic apparently had no problems using such metaphors himself, though! He wrote, "From first to last, these scenes of Loamshire life are full of ... that subtle analytic skill which enables her to dissect a commonplace soul with all the accurate minuteness of a German entomologist engaged in a monograph upon a cockchafer - Athenaeum, Feb. 3, 1872.) The Quarterly Review also found "the disquisitions and meditations upon true and false methods of medical treatment ... tedious in the extreme" (April 1873). These specific faults of labored style were only specific examples of a general stylistic fault critics found in the novel. George Eliot had artistically reached her highest point thus far, and the critics felt the perfection of prose found in Middlemarch too perfect, too obviously revised and edited.
          If we have a fault to find with "Middlemarch," it is that it is almost too laboured ... [The points] have been written and re-written, polished and re-polished, until they glitter almost painfully. When Mrs. Cadwallader says that Casaubon's great soul is a great bladder for dried peas to rattle in, and when she adds to this the further remark that a drop of his blood was put under a magnifying class, and it was all semicolons and parentheses, we cannot resist a certain sense of effort (Athenaeum, Dec. 7, 1872).

        Most of all, Middlemarch's contemporary critics objected to the novel's failure to act as a novel. Novelistic fiction had a contract with the reader in which it was bound to produce relaxation and repose, rather than spur the reader to think uncomfortable thoughts. The uncomfortable questionings prompted by Middlemarch are such as "do not arise after a reading which has left the mind satisfied" (Fortnightly Review, Jan. 19, 1873). Such discomfort with the feelings produced by Eliot's novel prompted the Quarterly Review to remark,

          It is not the moral nor is it the artistic purpose of a work of fiction, (or indeed of sound literature at all) to produce this state of mind and to invite such afterthoughts (April 1873).
        Hence, Eliot's work, although full of humor and generally true observations on human life, was considered by some to have failed to reach "the highest position among works of art," because of the "impression it leaves upon us of the failure of human life" (North American Review, April 1873). Precisely because of its assumption of human life for its topic, the novel failed to fulfill its novelistic duty.
          Such a life as ours is too complicated, too revolutionary, too full of sudden surprises and absurdities, too sad, too merry, too horribly real, too shamefully false, to admit of that repose which furnishes the only sure foundation for happy art (Atlantic Monthly, April 1873).

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        Serial Form of Publication:
        Critics either loved or hated the serial form of the novel's original publication. The Athenaeum, which reviewed each book as it was released, mentioned in every review that "Its present manner of appearance spoils much of our enjoyment. Even those who do not like champagne in tumblers, are not bound to prefer their nectar by the drop" (Feb. 3, 1872). He felt the end of the third book too obviously adapted for the serial form, intending to keep the reader interested until the publication of the next volume.

        Despite its serial publication, most critics agreed that the book was written as a complete whole. Though he hated the serial form, the Athenaeum critic did note that "it is clear that it has not been written, although published, serially" (Jun. 1, 1872). The Spectator also saw "no sign of a half completed or altered design anywhere," but it did like the form, finding the mode of publication fitting to the subject material of the novel.

          We are disposed to maintain that no story gets so well apprehended, so completely mastered in all its aspects, as one which, written as a whole, is published in parts. There is, at all events, this to be said in its favour, - that it is the only way in which human life itself, of which fiction is supposed to be the mirror, can be studied ... Those will understand it best and value it most who have made acquaintance slowly during the past year with all its characters, and discussed them eagerly with their friends, in all the various stages of their growth and fortune (Dec. 7, 1872).
        And while he does not seem to like the serial form generally, even the Blackwood's critic believed that "if any work of fiction can bear the being read in portions without injury to its effect, it is one which, like the present, is really not so much a novel as a narrative which is made the vehicle of careful studies of character" (Dec. 1872). The only disagreement about the book's completed design came from the Quarterly Review, which may have expressed more wishful thinking than actual criticism of the novel. The critic writes, "We confess to a suspicion that there has been a change of plot in the course of composition; that the story, as originally conceived, was to have concluded with more startling and exciting incidents" (April 1873).

        Finally, the number of people who read Middlemarch, and the wide scope of its impact, is expressed by the critic of the Edinburgh Review. Supporting the serial form of publication, he gives us as modern readers a glimpse of the excitement which Eliot's novel afforded her contemporaries, and the reason behind the heated debates over everything in Middlemarch, from the style to the characters. He writes,

          ... the result [of serial publication] has been felicitous. During very many months an agitation of interest in the personages it has created has been kept up even beyond the ordinary range of literary circles ... Acute lawyers have argued that Mary Garth was guilty in equity of forging her uncle's will, by refusing to assist him in accomplishing his last testamentary desires, and doctors have been recounting various suspicious family histories in which they might have been implicated in the crime of murder with quite as much justice as Lydgate in the hastened death of Raffles (Jan. 1873).

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        Characters in Middlemarch:
        Although some characters, like Will Ladislaw, were universally disparaged by contemporary critics, most critics varied widely in their emphasis. They all, of course, addressed the two main marriages and stories of failure: Dorothea and Lydgate. But even in summarizing these threads of plot, reaction ranged from sympathetic to condemning. The intense debate surrounding the actions and the motives of the characters prompted the Athenaeum to observe that it was quite likely they were, in reality, actual people.

          Indeed, so numerous are the dramatis personae ... that we should weary of them had not each the most vigorious and unmistakable personality of his own. It is indeed difficult to believe that these are pure creations ... there are people alive to whom not only Rosamond Vincy and Miss Celia Brooke, but with them all, or almost all, the leading men and women of Middlemarch are realities of flesh and blood. Nothing but personal knowledge would have enabled the writer to so thoroughly preserve so large a number of distinct identities ... it is impossible to believe [Mr. Brooke] not drawn from the life (Dec. 7, 1872).

        Dorothea was certainly not regarded as the ideal prototype of a heroine by the general public. The Catholic World was particularly harsh with her character, taking exception to the comparison of Dorothea with Saint Theresa, and observing that "from beginning to end, all is uncertainty with her. From girlhood up she lives in an atmosphere of self-delusion and imagination which can find no other possible vent than aimless aspirations after imaginary perfection" (Sept. 1873). Most critics were not quite as condemning, but they nevertheless found her an uncomfortable model for English womanhood. Looking for instruction in the novel, in the form of a female role model, the critics naturally felt Eliot's choice fell on Dorothea rather than her more ordinary sister, Celia, or the devious Rosamond. But the choice did not make them happy.

          We must say that if our young ladies, repelled by the faint and "neutral" virtues of Celia on the one hand, and the powerfully drawn worldly Rosamond on the other, take to be Dorotheas, with a vow to dress differently from other women, and to regulate their own conduct on the system of a general disapproval of the state of things into which they are born, the world will be a less comfortable world without being a better one (Saturday Review, Dec. 7, 1872).
        The Saturday Review even went so far as to comment that if the condition of the ideal woman is to be surrounded by dignified objects but choose to reject them, it was "a condition not adapted to the continuance of the race" (Dec. 21, 1872). The same idealistic oddity of behavior that isolated her from Dorothea Middlemarch neighbors also estranged her from the critics of the book.

        On the other hand, Celia was an almost universally acknowledged model of feminine virtue, and the critics were sorely offended at Eliot's small jibes at her simplicity and lack of sisterly tact.

          [Celia] really never goes contrary to our sense of what is amiable and dutiful in woman; though, not being in the good graces of the author, we are not allowed to find her attractive. ... not feeling it her duty to subvert the world, she can take her place in it naturally. But surely it is not every girl's duty to refuse the advantages and pleasures of the condition in which she finds herself because all do not share them (Saturday Review, Dec. 7, 1872).

        Dorothea's first husband, Mr. Casaubon, drew from the readers exactly the emotions George Eliot seems to have aimed for. Pity mixed with disgust characterized the critics' reaction. The Athenaeum wrote that he was,

          not bad, but hopelessly and achingly negative and repulsive ... In manner he is an insufferable and most overweening prig, - which is a positive trait in him, and very pronounced ... his physique, especially in the matter of legs, is atrocious (Dec. 2, 1871).

        Yet even this repulsive man was better than Dorothea's second choice of husbands, Will Ladislaw. Not only did the critics refuse to like him, but they could not understand why Eliot (or Dorothea) did. The Spectator wrote, "Will Ladislaw is altogether uninteresting ... He is petulant, small, and made up of spurts of character, without any wholeness and largeness" (Dec. 7, 1872). One critic blamed the insubstantial nature of Ladislaw's character on George Eliot's being a woman, calling Will a "woman's man," and noting that he is a failure as a character because "he is, we may say, the one figure which a masculine intellect of the same power as George Eliot's would not have conceived with the same complacency" (The Galaxy, Mar. 1873). But ultimately it seems the general dissatisfaction with Ladislaw was the result of a sense of unfairness about the novel's ending. Ladislaw's success and Lydgate's failure drew the critics into an implicit comparison of the two men, and the result was the general lack of repose the critics disliked about the novel. The Saturday Review wrote,

          Nature has done much for [Ladislaw], but duty - by which all the other characters of the story are tested - altogether fails in him. He does what he likes, whether right or wrong, to the end of the story; he makes no sacrifices ... While poor Lydgate - ten times the better man - suffers not only in happiness, but in his noblest ambitions ... because he marries and is faithful to the vain selfish creature whom Ladislaw merely flirts with (Dec. 7, 1872).
        The contrast between the fates and the characters of the two men is perhaps even more strikingly rendered in the criticism of them than in the novel. While Will was considered weak and selfish, Lydgate was a "complete portrait of a man," "treated so little from what we may roughly (and we trust without offense) call the sexual point of view" (The Galaxy, Mar. 1873).

        The cast of supporting characters Eliot enlists in her portrayal of the town of Middlemarch was generally praised by all, with minor disagreements about individual favorites, and the believability of their actions. Mr. Brooke was a universal favorite, and Mrs. Cadwallader delighted everyone. The Galaxy, complained of Fred Vincy's character, saying, "To the end we care less about Fred Vincy than appears to be expected of us" because Eliot "narrates his fortunes with a fulness of detail which the reader often finds irritating" (Mar. 1873). But this fullness of detail was generally acclaimed as one the books virtues, and a more severe fault was found in the episode of Bulstrode's fortunes, which were seen as tinged with a melodramatic quality not quite true to the mundane subject matter of the rest of the narrative. The deviousness of a man whom the critics considered a moral Christian was not quite a believable portrayal of his inner workings, according to the Spectator.

          We cannot help thinking that George Eliot makes a mistake in representing a man of Bulstrode's type of mind as entirely unoppressed by the guilt of what he well knew to be, morally, murder, until disgrace comes upon him (Dec. 7, 1872).

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        Ambivalence:
        Despite all the faults the critics were quick to point out in Middlemarch, it received high praise overall. Most of the reviews were characterized by the use of "but" throughout, followed by statements that both qualified and nullified the previous dissatisfaction expressed by the reviewer. The Spectator said Middlemarch was "if not her completest, yet in many respects her freest and greatest work" (Dec. 7), and, when discussing the individual installments, noted that one was a "striking and vigorous installment of George Eliot's tolerably even and placid, though morbidly intellectual tale" (Mar. 30, 1872). The Galaxy called it "at once one of the strongest and one of the weakest of English novels," and "a treasure-house of details, but ... an indifferent whole" (Mar. 1873). Every critical reaction was distinguished by this inability to characterize the effect of the novel. The Athenaeum, wrote, "In short, Middlemarch, if not the best or the pleasantest of George Eliot's works, is yet beyond all measure the most powerful" (Dec. 7, 1872).

        In approaching George Eliot's scientific style, the Spectator wavers back and forth between calling it pedantic and noting that Eliot is incapable of being pedantic, an opinion that apparently existed simultaneously about the same work.

          This book "Middlemarch" has certainly as much power in it as either of the others, and more wit ... there is much less of the high scientific style, which, though it is not pedantry in George Eliot, - who is incapable of pedantry, - has all the effect of it to those who do not know her writings well (Mar. 30, 1872).
        The Spectator even pointed out this discrepancy between critical commentary and general opinion.
          We all grumble at "Middlemarch;" we all say that the action is slow, that there is too much parade of scientific and especially physiological knowledge in it, that there are turns of phrase which are even pedantic, and that occasionally the bitterness of the commentary on life is almost cynical; but we all read it, and all feel that there is nothing to compare with it appearing at the present moment in the way of English literature, and not a few of us calculate whether we shall get the August number before we go for our autumn holiday (Jun. 1, 1872).
        Ultimately, the critic from the Fortnightly Review summed up critical reaction when he said, "Do these qualities (her style of writing) satisfy us as thoroughly as they rouse and interest? Sometimes I think they do, and sometimes not" (Jan. 19, 1873).

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        1881-1891

        George Eliot's Religion
        When George Eliot died, many of her contemporaries turned again to the unorthodox religious views displayed in books such as Middlemarch. Clerics such as W.J. Barry took offense at Eliot's description of St. Theresa's early failures, where "domestic reality" "turned [her] back from [her] great resolves." Barry dedicated a whole article to Eliot's religion, writing that

          with all her devotion to mankind George Eliot is unable to imagine that, at the heart of things, there must be even a greater love than hers. She cannot rise to a higher conception of the world than that it is a system of laws self-administered, wheels that turn of their own accord, and springs that set themselves going" (Dublin Review, Mar. 1881).
        One might argue that within this description lies the heart of Middlemarch, in which Eliot watched the social processes naturally occurring within it, the "wheels" and "springs" of one particular community. The negative tone of this description does much to underscore and little to resolve the religious uneasiness of Eliot's books.

        Rather than criticizing her beliefs, many periodicals tried to cast a more positive light on them. Keeping closer to Eliot's words in Middlemarch, the Westminster Review describes her belief system as a "human science" (Feb. 1881). The Modern Review published a joint eulogy for Eliot and Carlyle, two figures who shared a high reputation but whose religious stances varied significantly. Both worked in "the laboratory of life," where their writing embodied "the essence of the central Christian idea" (Feb. 1881). By drawing together the impious and the pious, the anonymous writer minimizes Eliot's divergent opinions, discussing clinical "essences" rather than religious particularities. One writer for Blackwood's Magazine worked to generalize Eliot's uncertainties as those of a specific time period. This laudatory article suggests that Eliot belonged "to an age of skepticism" (April, 1883). The piece brings out the positive aspects of Eliot's beliefs by arguing that her characters owe their rich complexity largely to the skepticism which pervades the book; it argues that Casaubon would not have been as interesting "if he had not been haunted with an agonising doubt as to the soundness of his own arguments." Some anxiety over Eliot's religion persisted in spite of these efforts to efface or distance it from her works.

        If Eliot's religious views were dubious, her morality seemed to be secure. The Contemporary Review claimed that her moral virtue was widely acknowledged - an ethics professor was even known to quote Eliot in his classroom (though not specifically from Middlemarch). This friendly critic joined many others in commending Eliot's "inherent respect for average humanity [which] made itself felt, perhaps somewhat exaggerated, when it was the only respect she could feel" (Feb. 1881). Eliot's contemporaries often gauged her conscientiousness by the earnest respect she afforded each of her characters.

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        Characterization in Middlemarch
        Eliot's portrayal of women in particular met with a warm reception. Critic Abba Woolson hailed Dorothea as "perhaps, the finest, noblest female character to be found in all fiction" (60). Woolson also enjoyed Eliot's comments on marriage, particularly where Lydgate finds his ideal woman to be a poor choice for a wife. Marrying Dorothea, Woolson writes, "would have been to [Lydgate], indeed, a saving strength and inspiration" (88). By showing such poor matches, Eliot speaks out for the kind of companionate marriage Dorothea seems to seek, Woolson writes. But the negative outcome of key marriages in the novel also gave rise to another line of thought. G.W. Cooke finds that Dorothea was frustrated by her environment, that "the social life of Tipton really had no room for such a woman, could not employ her rare gifts, knew not what to make of her yearnings and her charity" (329). Although this view focuses on Eliot's sense of female impossibility rather than potential, Cooke, too, appreciated the strong female roles she created in Middlemarch.

        Eliot's considerate attention to each of her characters won over her readers; yet it was not just single portraits which secured her reputation. "While the earlier novels impressed by striking individualities, in 'Middlemarch' the finished and delicate delineations of character, the sharp contrasts and the subtle play of nature upon nature, stamp the book as the work of a genius that had attained maturity," (Blackwood's Magazine, Feb. 1881). Eliot's eye for social interactions, both the "sharp" and the "subtle," was a talent many critics praised. Mathilde Blind wrote that in Middlemarch

          every unit of this complex social agglomeration is described with a life-like vividness truly amazing, when the number and variety of the characters especially are considered. I know not where else in literature to look for a work which leaves such a strong impression on the reader's mind of the intertexture of human lives" (241).

        While most critics agreed that the complexity of Eliot's textual portraits brought communities like Middlemarch to life, some failed to see the ingenuity of such work. The Dublin Review argued that there was little art in copying reality: "From their searching and minute accuracy of detail, and their multitude of sharp outlines, the earlier group of her stories [up through Middlemarch] has all but incurred dispraise at the hands of many critics as no better than photographs" (Feb. 1881). The Review weakly refutes this criticism by answering that Eliot's characters are animated by a "simple warmth and grace," yet the original objection evidently carried enough weight at the time to be printed. T. E. Kebbel followed a similarly reductive argument. Among the farmers and the clergy and the smaller squires who inhabited the midland counties of England," Kebbel wrote,

          the old fashions and old beliefs and old prejudices survived in their integrity, forming such a mine of wealth for the first literary artist whose instincts should lead him to the spot. Such an artist was the late George Eliot, whose reputation, as it was originally created, will also in our judgment be principally preserved, by her pictures of English rural life. (Fraser's Magazine, Feb. 1881).
        "Instinct," rather than talent, forms the basis for Eliot's success according to this article. Whether critics regarded her "Study of Provincial Life" as a stroke of genius or luck, its reputation depended on the reception of Eliot's community portraits. For as the Westminster Review reported, the novel was "a provincial epic, a kind of village panorama ... "Middlemarch" commands a wider view of the human horizon than any of [Eliot's] previous works" (Feb. 1881).

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        Problems with Plot
        Middlemarch's large scope drew another common complaint: the book seemed to lack a cohesive plot. Mathilde Blind went so far as to say that Middlemarch was "a story without a plot. In fact, it seems hardly appropriate to call it a novel ... Here, as in some kind of panorama, sections of a community and groups of character pass before the mind's eye" (240) as if the reader were looking at a Hogarth painting. Abba Woolson, too, criticizes the scattered nature of Eliot's story: "Unity of action, producing singleness of impression on the reader's mind, can only result from singleness of aim of the part of the author. George Eliot has too many aims in her books; she seeks to accomplish too much" (30). Equally indicative of the complaints against Eliot's plot were the many weak arguments that came to its defense. Oscar Browning offers a catalog of apologies for Eliot's story line:

          Perhaps she was conscious that it had not been conceived in her mind as a whole. The book also is stronger for representing rather the intertwining and conflicting currents of actual life than attempting to emphasize a particular purpose of instruction. No doubt the effect of the book was intensified by its appearance in installments, and by the fact that the interest excited by it was similar to that aroused by the gradual development of human action and affairs (113).
        Middlemarch attempted something new, and critics often either praised or questioned Eliot's ability to bring together disparate parts, both in the conception of the book, its plot, its publication, and its subject.

        Partly because of its unwieldy plot, some critics found Middlemarch to be a very pessimistic book. A critic for the Westminster Review wrote that the plot was "too monotonous to be effective, the construction too colossal for satisfying survey... we are half inclined to interpret it as an intended reflection on the futility and unprofitableness of life" (Feb. 1881). G.W. Cooke seems to have shared this gloomy interpretation:

          The purpose of Middlemarch is critical, to show how our modern social life cramps the individual, limits his energies, and destroys his power of helpful service to the world. This critical aim runs through the whole work and colors every feature of it. The impression made by the whole work is saddening; and the reader, while admiring the artistic power and the literary finish of the book, is depressed by the moral issue (325).
        That objective, Cooke argues, "is to illustrate the impotence of modern life so far as it relates to moral heroism and spiritual attainment" (328). In this analysis, Eliot's "spots of commonness" become the dull stains of social constraint. While not everyone agreed that Eliot's message was "saddening," this reading appears in several sources throughout the decade.

        Regardless of these critiques, articles during this period were written to commemorate Eliot's greatness. Her critics agreed that Eliot's work in general, and Middlemarch in particular, captured a unique aspect of human existence. Blackwood's Magazine wrote that "'Middlemarch' gives George Eliot the chiefest claim to stand by the side of Shakespeare" (April 1883); both authors give the "epitome" of man and his world. Critics compared Eliot not only to Shakespeare but also to acknowledged contemporary geniuses such as Thomas Carlyle. Of course, by claiming a space for Eliot that was so close to the center of the literary canon, the Blackwood critic was trying to further the name of the magazine as well; the article teemed with descriptions of how John Blackwood nurtured Eliot as a young writer. Critics and friends alike came forward to recognize Eliot's resonance in English popular sentiment. As "one who knew her" wrote in The Contemporary Review, "we do not believe any genius ever received more contemporaneous recognition. Still it is true that death in her case, as in so many others, reveals to us the large space she occupied in our attention" (Feb. 1881).

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        1. Elaine Showalter, A Literature of Their Own. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1977. p. 42.