Chapter 13

The authors begin this chapter with a description of George Eliot’s reaction to American writer Harriet Beecher Stowe’s <a data-internal-link data-link-type="Literary Device" href="https://www.supersummary.com/claim/">claim</a> that she was visited by “the spectral presence of Charlotte Brontë” (444). Eliot may have found Stowe’s tale of “spirit-communication” amusing, but she went on to write The Lifted Veil, a novella concerning a <a data-internal-link data-link-type="Literary Device" href="https://www.supersummary.com/protagonist/">protagonist</a> with powers of extrasensory perception. This example of contradictory behavior gives Gilbert and Gubar reason to describe Eliot as a woman writer with an “ambivalent sense of herself” (445). The protagonist of The Lifted Veil, a man named Latimer, can see into the future. His hallucinations make him miserable because he is unable to change anything about his future; the events he foresees are not at all in his control. Some literary critics believe that Latimer shares many qualities with his author, and Gilbert and Gubar compare him to William Crimsworth, the title character of Charlotte Brontë’s The Professor. According to Gilbert and Gubar, one important link between Latimer and Eliot is their shared belief that “imaginative vision” is a negative condition. In addition, Latimer’s pained and unhappy situation in the world echoes the plight of many women, who are regarded, like him, as “secondary” to others.

Chapter 13 Summary: “Made Keen by Loss: George Eliot’s Veiled Vision” 

Chapter 14 Chapter 14 Summary: “George Eliot as the Angel of Destruction”

Part 5 Part 5 Analysis

History: World

European History

Humanities

Philosophy, Logic, & Ethics

Literary Area of Study

Women's Studies

Sandra Gilbert

Susan Gubar

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Book

Nonfiction

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Preface-Introduction

The Madwoman in the Attic Preface-Introduction Summary & Analysis

Part 1: “Toward a Feminist Poetics”

Part 1 The Madwoman in the Attic Part 1 Summary & Analysis

Part 2: “Inside the House of Fiction: Jane Austen’s Tenants of Possibility”

Part 2 The Madwoman in the Attic Part 2 Summary & Analysis

Part 3: “How Are We Fal’n?: Milton’s Daughters”

Part 3 The Madwoman in the Attic Part 3 Summary & Analysis

Part 4: “The Spectral Selves of Charlotte Brontë”

Part 4 The Madwoman in the Attic Part 4 Summary & Analysis

Part 5: “Captivity and Consciousness in George Eliot’s Fiction”

The Madwoman in the Attic Part 5 Summary & Analysis

Part 6: “Strength in Agony: Nineteenth-Century Poetry by Women”

Part 6 The Madwoman in the Attic Part 6 Summary & Analysis

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The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination

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Part 5: “Captivity and Consciousness in George Eliot’s Fiction”

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