A study of characterisation in the novels of George Eliot

96.
acknowledged, "in itself, it is incompetent to furnish any better
reason why what we call good is preferable to what we call evil than
what we had before. II 26
The belief in progress and the hope of founding a satisfactory
ethic on the theory of evolution were steadily eroded by the end of the
century •. Huxley's dissentient voice is indicative of this erosion but
there were many . other writers who failed to share the mid-century optimism
in Positivistic representations. 27 ~eorge Eliot's own optimism was
tempered by her conservatism and by her recognition that improvements,
while possible, were inevitably gradual. ·.. Nevertheless the belief
in moral growth is fundamental to her.
If same characters can and do achieve moral c:::cel1ence ·::he.t is the
faculty that enables them to do so? Let us now examine what, in George
Eliot's view, constitutes moral discrimination. The nineteenth century
moral philosophers borrowed the term "moral sense" from the previous century.
It is the development of this moral sense that allows a character
in a George Eliot novel to emerge from "moral stupidity." 28