A study of characterisation in the novels of George Eliot

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morality must not be allowed to degenerate into a platform for personal
. preference~ ,and idiosyncrasy •. To understand this, we must take account of
what George Eliot understood by "individualism."
In a work called Individualism, Stephen Lukes discusses the various
"unit-ideas" 41 encompassed by the vlord individualism. Three of Lukes's
unit-ideas help us to specify more clearly the problem of relativism and
to show how George Eliot responded to it. The first of these, religious
individualism, leads to spiritual equality and religious self-scrutiQY.
It will be immediately apparent what an important role it has played in the
Protestant individualist ethic. Lukes mentions that the New Testament
offers the greatest contribution to individualism. He also lists the
re-affirmation of this individualism that occurred at the time of the
Reformation, and Luther t s and Calvin t s preoccupation with individual
salvation. Ian Watt places George Eliot firmly in the Puritan tradition
along with Def oe, Richardson, and D. H. LavlI'ence; ,.lrem he declares that
"they all seek by introspection and observation to build their' o,m personal
scheme of moral certainty; and in different ways they all manifest
the self-righteous and somewhat angular indivIdualism of the earlier
Puritan character." lJ-2 We see an example of such self-righteous and
angUlar individualism in George Eliot's answer to Cara Bray·s letter
criticising her for publicly setting up house inth Lewes. 43 It is a
quality that very much belongs to George Eliot, the author, but is sadly
missing in George Eliot characters whose very education is an education
away from such a quality.
The second of Lukes's unit-ideas which is germane to this discussion
is "epistemological individualism," a theory about the nature of knowledge
"which asserts that the source of knowledge lies within the individual.
II 44 The logical outcome of such a theory is total solipsism,
although this is rare. The true epistemological individualist, according