Note 76 to Chapter 6 of the author's George Eliot and the Visual Arts, which Yale University Press published in a 1979. It has been included in the Victorian web with the kind permission of the author, who of course retains copyright.
See A. Dwight Culler, "Monodrama and the Dramatic Monologue," Publications of the Modern Language Association, 90 (1975), 373-75; Kirsten Gram Holmstrom, Monodrama, Attitudes, Tableaux Vivants: Studies on Some Trends of Theatrical Fashion, 1770-1815 (Stockholm: Almquist and Wiksell, 1967), pp. 110-40; and Ziolkowski, Disenchanted Images, pp. 34-35. That George Eliot knew the scene in Die Wahlverwandtschaften is clear from an entry in her Berlin journal of 1854-55: "I was pleased also to recognize among the pictures the one by Jan Steen, which Goethe describes in the 'Wahlverwandtschaften' as the model of a tableau vivant, presented by Luciane and her friends. It is the daughter being reproved by her father, while the mother is emptying the wineglass" (Cross, I, 299). The picture is actually by Terborch, not Steen, and Goethe refers specifically to "Wille's admirable engraving" (pt. 2, chap. 5).
Last modified 20 September 2000
