A DISREGARDED NOVELIST

The revered, law-making Concise Cambridge History of English Literature (1941; often reprinted) speaks in a somewhat disparaging manner of George Moore's two major novels (which, in fact, in the author's mind, were but one), Evelyn Innes (1898) and Sister Teresa (1901) : "as a novel, Evelyn Innes (with its continuation) does not rank very high - there is some return to the flashy manner" (p. 953). This seems unfair. In spite of some occasional clumsiness in the writing, perhaps, these two novels, dealing with the career of an opera-singer who finally converts herself and becomes a nun, raise momentous questions about religion, faith, the sense of sin and the knotty point of sex interfering with art in woman's nature. The scene in Sister Teresa when Evelyn, now Sister Teresa, tempts two nuns by singing Wagner's music (from Lohengrin and Tristan und Isolde) is significant in this respect (ch. XXXIII) : "she began to feel she was possessed by the devil".