Jane Austen, George Eliot and the Reflective Tradition

In her exploration of the moral tradition shared between Jane Austen and George Eliot, Rose Pimentel argues that a common ethical dynamic between the two authors, and what would later be known as the realist novel, emerged from an emphasis on reflection as introspection that was widespread in the eighteenth century. Pimentel examines what she calls the reflective tradition across a range of discourses, including moral philosophy, children’s literature, the novel, poetry, educational tracts and sermons, that would have been familiar to Austen. Through the lens of Eliot and George Henry Lewis’s shared readings of Austen, Pimentel shows how Austen draws on and expands ideas of reflection from the eighteenth century. Thus, her reading of Eliot in the 1850s reflects on to Austen while her reading of Austen, in turn, reflects back on to Eliot as she analyzes the ways in which Eliot developed this aspect of Austen’s art. By placing Austen’s and Eliot’s novels in a rich and reflective dialogue, Pimentel enriches our understanding of their work in a way that views neither the reflective tradition nor the development of the novel as teleological.