From formless matter to matter with form

pp. 54-68

in: Saleel Nurbhai, K. M. Newton, George Eliot, judaism and the novels, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2002

Abstract

As discussed previously, in kabbalistic tradition one definition of something being golem — both as noun and adjective — is that it have no shape or form. As an entity comes within bounds, or gains shape, perspective, or definition, it ceases to be golem. Such a process — from chaos to order — can be applied to many creation myths. A distinguishing feature of the golem myth is that it locates this process in the individual. Eliot's use of the paradigm is not merely the novelist's art of exploiting it for dramatic and metaphoric purposes but a more exact use of the religious and philosophic ideas that accompany Jewish mysticism. To do this, she was able to call upon precursors in literature and religious philosophy.