A study of characterisation in the novels of George Eliot

6.
Eliot wanted, even needed, to believe in a freely operating will--otherwise
how can man advance to a more morally enlightened state with greater
emphasis on fellowship and sympathy, and less on a self-seeting "amoral
individualism"? 14 --nonetheless her prevailing mood is bleak and despondent
and her view of human potential is far from prOmising. These views
are not mutually exclusive but represent honest attempts to respond to
different levels of George Eliot's presentation of the human dilemma. The
epigraph she tl),kes from Rasselas, for ohapter 61 of l.1iddlemarch, is appropriat~
\.,
"I Inconsistencies,' answered Imlac, 'cannot both be right, but im-
puted to man they may both be true.' II 15 However much a critic may desire
".
to take lIa firm footingll like Mr Casaubon so that lithe vast field of mythical
constructions becomes intelligible, nay luminous vlith the reflected light
of correspondences,1I 16 this is not possible. U. C. Knoepflmacher laments
the/'bifocation in George Eliot criticism between those who regard her
primarily as a representative nineteenth~century
intellectual and those
v/ho consider her first ancl foremost as a novelist. He calls for "a cohesive
approach" that will combine ttthe methods of the t new criticism t
with those
of the 'history of ideas. tit 17
My aim is to offer a synthesis of these two methods, to find a satisfactory
bridge between an approach to George Eliot's novels that examines
her relationship to the background of ideas and an approach which is exclusively
formalistic. CloBe attention to the texts of the novels makes it
possible to isolate and identify certe.in key ideas and constellations of
ideas which can then be related to the general baclr..e;round of nineteenth
century thought. In tlus way it is possible to formulate the set of constructs
by means of which George Eliot came to terms w1.th the external
world. Onoe we have located these constructs in the novels, we can
ascertain their effectiveness as determinants of action, as motive forces
for characterisation and plot. Initially, therefore, I will concentrate on