A study of characterisation in the novels of George Eliot

97.
The article "Worldliness and Other-Worldliness: The Poet Young"
which George Eliot va-ote in JanuDry, 1857 for the ~minstef' Review
provides an abstract of her moral position. In it she makes a devastating
attacl: on the banality of Youngt s moral sentiments and the resulting
insincerity of his poetry. She concludes \nth a comparison
betvl8en Young and Cowper, pointing clearly to the moral deficiency of
the one and the moral worth of the other. This comparison is couched
in terms which clearly anticipl1te the authorial disapproval or approval
meted out to characters such as Tito Melema and Daniel :Deronda. She
claims that lIin Young we have the type of that deficient sympathy, that
impiety towarcls the present and t he visible, nhich flies for its motives,
its sanctities, and its religion, to the remote, the vague, ann the
unknown: in Cowper vie have the type of that genuine love which cherishes
things in proportion to their nearness, and feels its reverence grow in
-1
proportion to the intimacy of its knowledge. II • Young is devoid of sym-
::;athy, where~ls
Cowper is almost entirely motivated by this feeling. Earliar
in the same article she scornfully dismisses the notion that we require
a belief in immortality in order to be moral, as if only a fear of
consequences could persuade us to a virtuous act.
rFJ
fear of distant consequences is a very insufficient barrier against
the rush of immediate desire. Fear of consequences is only one form
of egoism •••• In opposition to {lhii theory that a belief in immorta
1 -1 ty is the only source of ilirtue, I maintain that, so far as
moral aotionis dependent on that belief, so far the emotion
which prompts it is not truly moral--is still in the stage of
egoism, and has not attained the higher development of sympathy.
2
These two quotations provide us with a clear statement of George Eliot's
belief that moral awareness is predominantly a feeling and that the
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